The Def Guide to Zzap!64

Hi All,

What an excellent idea. I received my Zzap!64 DVD this morning, and have started zipping up issues and creating eMule links. I'm about half way there! I'll run eMule 24/7 seeding these files. I've also created an ISO of the DVD for inclusion.

At present the links are on the following page:

http://www.silent-system.net/zzap64/

Can you post here if you find this useful. If I get no response I won't waste my time

I'm not sure how Mort feels about this, as he spent a long time scanning those issues...

LeeT wrote:I'm not sure how Mort feels about this, as he spent a long time scanning those issues...

Ummm, I take it you havn't read

http://www.zzap64.co.uk/emule.html

?

In addition, it's not like Mort wants to make anything out of this (presumably—I've never asked him); it's one thing for some scumbag to try and sell Zzap! DVDs at a profit on eBay, but it's another thing to make files available for download.

Well, sharing a few Zzap issues through eMule (to tease people into ordering Mort's hard work) is something completely different to zipping all issues/scans and making them all freely downloadable, or even offering the whole DVD iso on the web!
Hello!?

I'd say leave it up to Iain & Mort what they want to distribute through eMule.
Btw, no offence, I think you didn't mean to disadvantage anyone.
But I think it's safe to say that we are not too pleased with your idea.

Best,

Rob

Hmmm, my intention was never to steal anyones glory. I was just trying to assist.

I do find it strange though, considering the full scans used to available online - in fact I hosted them all for a few months here in Aus. I believe they were taken down due to the huge amount of bandwidth and space they took.

Also, I'd like to point out the following paragraph from Iian's eMule link:

"Since I will probably never have enough web space or bandwidth to put all the issues online, I am going to make them available on eMule. Once a few people download them and share them, they will be easier and quicker to get and won't be using all my bandwidth."

"If this is a popular addition to the site, I'll add lots more Zzap issues and other C64 magazines as well."

Maybe I misread something? Seems clear to me. Either way, its seeming more hassle than its worth to try and help the community.

Unless advised otherwise by Iian or Mort, the links are offline indefinatly.

I can't decide how I feel about this whole thing.

On one hand, Mort has put a hell of a lot of work (and broken scanners) into scanning all these issues and I don't mind him getting a few pounds for his hours.

On other other hand, the reason the issues were scanned was to preserve them and make them available to the community. The CD/DVD idea came out of the fact that servers were getting killed with all the downloads and to enable people without a broadband connection to get the issues easily. When the issues were first put on CD, broadband wasn't massively widespread and I don't think P2P was even around. P2P is an obvious way to spread them in a less bandwidth intensive manner.

I was planning to add more issues to my eMule page (after the first few had spread a bit) but I don't know if I'd be adding them all.

None of us has any claim to the copyright of these issues, so we don't really have a say in how they are distributed. I guess the issue is one of respect or morals.

What's your input on all of this Mort?

My belief is they should be spread freely, I don`t mind weather it would be p2p, Cd, Dvd, Emule or whatever, I can understand toes getting trod on, I personally don`t mind as long as people can get to read the mags with minimum of fuss. The only thing I ask is the dvd is not iso`d so I don`t end up with hundreds of dvd images ending up on ebay which could open up all sort of cans of worms

Good thing is every year the size of the complete set gets comparitivly smaller so in 5 years the whole set could be a 5 minute jobby to download

I have removed the DVD image - so no worries there!

But in the current climate of comments, I won't be spreading them at all.

silent wrote:I have removed the DVD image - so no worries there!

But in the current climate of comments, I won't be spreading them at all.

Hi Silent,
I'm sorry. I've obviously should have shut up, and wait for Iain & Mort to express their point of view, after all who am I?

Like I said:

Btw, no offence, I think you didn't mean to disadvantage anyone.

If Mort has no problem distributing all the scans, who am I to say that it's a bad idea?
I'd say do whatever you wanted to do, and forget some of our moans/concerns.
Fortunately we all do agree about the ISO.
No worries, Silent.

All the best,

Rob

One other thing,
The Dvd`s are donation ware(tm Mort industries), People get all the mags with absolutly no fuss and normally on return of post, most of the money goes back into sourcing new mags to scan (getting expensive with Big K and Personal Computer Games), scanners,printers and other essential equipment to keep the digitization process going (tend to wear stuff out rather quickly) and my old friend beer to keep me sane whilst doing the 40,000 odd scans done thus far(spend about 3 hours a day scanning zzzzz). Being donation ware nearly everything has been made available on the sites below.

Check out world of spectrum and Sinclair Heaven for most of the Sinclair Stuff (sinclair Heaven will also host the C&vg`s as soon as Carl sorts out server issues(bet Iain can relate to that)).


Thanks again and Cu the 64 years is nearing completion (worked concurrently with C&vg). Another 6 month project nearly done.


Mort

So after all's said and done may I ask where can one find the Hi-res spreads? I found a link for the singles on the P2P network but the spreads link doens't seem to have any seeds (and I still haven't downloaded the singles by the time I wrote this).

On another note... I got the DVD's for the spectrum mags almost 1 year ago. Great work. A question for Iain or Mort: Is this the typical size Mort scanned the mags and has them or where they size reduced to fit on a DVD? So can we expect even better quality when Blue Ray DVD's become reality?
Thnx

Probably because my computer wasn't on last night, I've just eMule running now so you should be able to get them. Enough people havn't downloaded the hi-res versions of 107 to make them widespread

re scanning.

The image sizes on the DVDs are the original sizes, Mort obviously resizes them straight after scanning but I very much doubt he keeps the large copies (as they're probably 4Mb each or something)

The image resolution was chosen so they'd fit on a 1024xwhatever size screen.

Maybe in a couple of years time we can convince (force!) Mort to rescan them all at a higher res and quality. We'll have to wait until he's scanned ever other computer mag under the sun first though!

iain wrote:I've just eMule running now so you should be able to get them.

I suppose you are referring to the hi-res spreads cause these are the ones I can't find. The singles are there.

Maybe in a couple of years time we can convince (force!) Mort to rescan them all at a higher res and quality. We'll have to wait until he's scanned ever other computer mag under the sun first though!

...about the time when the Scanomatic machine comes out, where you feed it a magazine and it converts it straight to OCR and saves in pdf,png,sxw,odf and maybe ogg,theora for some real in depth-reading
(Yes I am an open source formats fan...)

Well, if I'd unstaple a Zzap, and cut off the pages at the spine, I could feed them all at once and automatically into my Konica scanner/printer (a professional one), and it would scan the whole mag doublesided at 600 dpi within minutes, so....

batching OCR must be possible too...I guess? So..