Microfiche scanning

[Jules Richardson]

On Thu, 2005-04-21 at 12:28 +0100, Pete Turnbull wrote:
> On Apr 21 2005, 10:49, Jules Richardson wrote:
> >
> > Am I right in thinking that a home flatbed scanner has absolutely no
> > hope of providing the resolution needed to scan microfiche?
> >
> > We've got a *lot* of DEC documentation arrived on fiche (208 pages
> per
> > fiche, estimated 25000 sheets) and scanning some of the more useful
> bits
> > would be nice. So far the cost from commercial companies has either
> been
> > too high or the quality has been far too low to actually be useful
> :-(
> 
> Sadly, you'll find normal scanners all have the "too low resolution"
> problem to handle fiche.  

Yep, as I suspected :( I get the impression that some scanning firms
that say they can handle fiche are probably only running things through
a normal scanner too...

We do have what looks to be a reader with integral printer, which is an
interesting beastie - but it all looks rather battered and rusty (maybe
it sat outside at some point in its life). I don't hold out much hope of
it working again...

> Have you got much XXDP fiche?

I'll have a look... hard to tell what there is at the moment. Certainly
a lot of -11 stuff and peripherals, along with some -8 bits (which
implies that DEC made an effort to go back and transfer some of their -8
paper docs to fiche at some point).  Supposedly we've got everything
that was ever released on fiche by DEC, but I doubt there's any record
of exactly what that is anywhere...

cheers

Jules