I'm currently OCR'ing ZX Computing, so while that rumbles along in the background here's Amtix. It's probably heresy to mention the Arnold here, but if you squint your eyes Amtix looks a *lot* like Crash :lol:
.. and back to the scheduled service, here's ZX Computing. Like SU, the early issues have OCR'd pretty well due to the simple layout. There's a lot of type-ins that don't OCR well at all, but the rest of the content should be fine.
Nice. Keep'em coming! Still seeding Sinclair User, Your Sinclair and Your Spectrum. Are these going to be hosted on WOS as well? Can't remember if the guidelines allow magazines to be uploaded as single PDFs.
Martijn, if you're reading this, please consider adding Mhoogle's functionality to the Infoseek's searching capabilities. Infoseek already shows references to software and hardware in specific magazines, but it would be nice to be able to find articles or something specific within all the indexed magazines.
Ramp up those routers and clear another 6-and-a-bit gig of space, the OCR'd PDFs of Your Sinclair are now available :) Similar sort of results to Crash - pretty good OCR'ing on the early issues, not so good later when they went bit mad with the layout and fonts. The cover pages of a few of the early issues haven't been OCR'd - the software locked onto the offset YS logo and aligned the whole page to the logo :D
Next: PCG, then Sinclair User. Advanced warning: Sinclair User will be *huge* :O
I spotted an error with issue 06, June 1986 of Your Sinclair which you pdf'd.
Page 31 carries an advert for the artist 2, which has been scanned in portrait mode, when that particular page wants flipping around so it is in landscape mode.
After a short pause to let things settle down and seed a bit... here's Big K. Relatively small (900Mb) as there's only 12 issues, so this one shouldn't take long to grab. I've left the "automatically straighten images" option unticked this time, as the Big K layout guy LOVED to put pages at angles, and the OCR couldn't get a lock on the text otherwise. Maybe the IPC offices were on a hill?
I spotted an error with issue 06, June 1986 of Your Sinclair which you pdf'd.
Page 31 carries an advert for the artist 2, which has been scanned in portrait mode, when that particular page wants flipping around so it is in landscape mode.
I think there's a few of these - especially in The Tipshop, where they sometimes carried maps in portrait format. I might go back through the PDFs in the future and correct them ... it's on my "to-do" list :)
Thanks a lot for your effort, I've just downloaded the Sinclair User scans with Vuze and I'm enjoying a browse through my favorite Spectrum magazine ever :)
However, I noticed that in issue 93 page 31 (second part of The Write Stuff) is missing - there is a scan of page 34 (Robocop advert) instead.
Sorry for anyone having problems getting the BigK torrent, it seems by ISP has been having some problems over the last few days. Everything should be back to normal now, the torrent has been completely seeded nearly 7 times so there should be no problems grabbing it.
C+VG has hopefully just finished OCR'ing, I need to do a bit of tidying up of filenames etc and it'll be online by this weekend. It's gonna be a big one :-o
However, I noticed that in issue 93 page 31 (second part of The Write Stuff) is missing - there is a scan of page 34 (Robocop advert) instead.
It looks like this was a mistake in the original WoS scans - I've checked the archive and pages 31 and 34 are identical :( If someone can rescan page 31 of that issue I can fix the mistake.
I emailled Martijn about this couple of months ago when I first started OCR'd the Crash issues. Unfortunately the PDFs are considerably larger than the raw JPG files - I think this is because the OCR process breaks each page up until smaller graphical components - and therefore hosting them would put a strain on WoS's finite bandwidth limits.
Vampyre, how fast/slow are you downloading? Most of the ones I've done so far are pretty well seeded (relatively speaking); does your ISP traffic shape in any way?
I emailled Martijn about this couple of months ago when I first started OCR'd the Crash issues. Unfortunately the PDFs are considerably larger than the raw JPG files - I think this is because the OCR process breaks each page up until smaller graphical components - and therefore hosting them would put a strain on WoS's finite bandwidth limits.
Vampyre, how fast/slow are you downloading? Most of the ones I've done so far are pretty well seeded (relatively speaking); does your ISP traffic shape in any way?
At home I'm pulling Amtix and Your Sinclair at around 5-10kps. This is on Virgin Media's 50meg BB, no idea if they're shaping traffic but I would certainly suspect so. There's not many seeders to either.
Thought I'd try getting Sinclair User from work which is a 100meg leased line and it's grabbing those at the moment at 2.5kps. There's only 3 seeds and 4 peers on that so I would expect this to be slow (it has at some points hit 150kps though).
At last, the 10Gb behemoth C+VG scans are now done. Issues 001-126 included; apparently C+VG rumbled on for quite a few years after that, but I guess WoS only carries the issues that had anything to do with the Spectrum (which by 1992 I'm guessing weren't many :) ). Doing these reminded me how much a HATED C+VG in it's "Bug Hunters" phase, although these's a lot of good content before that :razz:
Sorry for the delay everyone, real life got in the way again. Your Computer is now done; it's incomplete (as per the WoS archive), but it's still interesting stuff. OCR has worked pretty well due to the boring *cough* plain layout of the early issues, and there's some good geeky content to be had.
Hi all - just to let everyone know I've not given up on the scanning. MicroHobby (Spanish) is crunching away just now, hopefully should be done in a few days. After that I'm going to start on Amstrad Action (OK so it's not Sinclair but it is Z80 :) ) and then a few NCE's.
On a non-Sinclair note, if anyone has a stash of Amiga/ST magazines that they'd be willing to sacrifice to my scalpel and my scanner for the good of future generations, please PM me - I've been practicing on a few of my son's Official Nintendo Magazines and I reckon I've got the debinding process perfected :)
... and here we are at last. I've only had the torrent online for 10 minutes, and already there's 7 people downloading it, so there must have been more Spanish-speaking Speccy types than I thought :) Hope everything is OK with the files, not speaking much Spanish at all it's difficult to tell - please let me know if there's anything messed up.
Hmmm, I hadn't spotted those - I'll add them to the list. I've just finished Zzap 64, but I'm going to spend a couple of days trying to get the file sizes down - they've come out more than 3 times the size of the original files :oops:
The MicroHobby torrent has (to my surprise) been by far the most popular torrent I've done so far. I've also just taken deliver of a huge pile of old Amiga mags, which I'm going to hack to bits and shove through my scanner - this will take months (years?) but I'll get there eventually :-)
Staying within the Z80 "family", here's the Amstrad Action scans at last. I've finally slain the "huge files" dragon - this collection is only slightly bigger than the original files, hooray! :smile: I'm going to go back and "repack" the original collections eventually, although as most of them are now completely seeded it's not a priority.
Zzap 64 is done also, I'll let this one seed for a little bit first before uploading the details here. Seeding should be pretty fast right now as I've "borrowed" some bandwidth; it's only temporary so grab this quick!
I've got a *huge* list of mags coming some time this decade: The Games Machine, Amiga Power, Amiga Format, Amiga Shopper, CU Amiga, ACE, The One, Your Commodore, New Computer Express, Zero and much more. Afraid there's not a lot of them Speccy-related, but please let me know if you have a favourite and I'll bump it up the "to be completed" list.
I'd love to see the New Computer Express scans, as I used to buy that every week, and was very disappointed when it disappeared. Do you have every issue?
The answer is: probably not :( I have the ones that are on the WoS FTP site, plus a few others I've found on other sites. I also have dozens of binders of old mags, and I'm sure there's more than a few NCE's in there (I loved NCE too, especially the earlier issues - it went a bit mad when it started doing coverdisks). I'll have more of an idea of which ones I'm missing soon.
EDIT: here we go, after an exhaustive (well, exhausting) rake, I reckon after consolidating the WoS issues and the ones I have here, I'll have all issues apart from:
6,8,23,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,38,39,40,41,42,43,46,47,48,50,54,57,58,61,63,69,72,73,74,79,81,83,87,88,89,90,92,103 and 106
If anyone knows where to get any of these issues, please let me know. I've got nearly 60 issues to scan, so it's going to take me a while to get them done anyway.
... and here's Zzap 64! (including "Commodore Force" and the 'special' issue 107). This is already pretty well seeded so should hopefully be a fairly fast download ...
Staying within the Z80 "family", here's the Amstrad Action scans at last. I've finally slain the "huge files" dragon - this collection is only slightly bigger than the original files, hooray! :smile: I'm going to go back and "repack" the original collections eventually, although as most of them are now completely seeded it's not a priority.
Amstrad Action seems to be very popular, I've uploaded 60gb so far...
I will keep seeding Microhobby and Your Computer for as long as possible. Looking forwards for the Microhobby specials. :)
I would advertise the links on Speccy.org, but if I'm not mistaken they don't allow urls pointing to torrent sites... I wonder if someone already posted all these links on c.s.s. and e.c.s.s...
Now imagine browsing all these magazines on your favorite touchscreen tablet!
Comments
Cool - cheers, I'm downloading them now and I'll get them OCR'd ASAP. Watch this space :smile:
Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5810723/Amtix_Magazine_issues_00-18_complete_OCR__d_PDF.5810723.TPB.torrent
Magnet: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:b08e54596f508cebeece3f9722b8d8f3acc17c63&dn=Amtix+Magazine+issues+00-18+complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDF&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fdenis.stalker.h3q.com%3A6969%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:b08e54596f508cebeece3f9722b8d8f3acc17c63&dn=Amtix+Magazine+issues+00-18+complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDF&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fdenis.stalker.h3q.com%3A6969%2Fannounce[/URL]
ZX Computing should be done in a couple of days. C&VG should follow afterwards.
Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5812845/ZX_Computing_Magazine_issues_01-38_complete_OCR__d_PDF.5812845.TPB.torrent
Magnet: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:611d83d6f2c7f968ea892e319fdb324e8e9c915b&dn=ZX+Computing+Magazine+issues+01-38+complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDF&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.prq.to%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:611d83d6f2c7f968ea892e319fdb324e8e9c915b&dn=ZX+Computing+Magazine+issues+01-38+complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDF&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.prq.to%2Fannounce[/URL]
Martijn, if you're reading this, please consider adding Mhoogle's functionality to the Infoseek's searching capabilities. Infoseek already shows references to software and hardware in specific magazines, but it would be nice to be able to find articles or something specific within all the indexed magazines.
I spotted an error with issue 06, June 1986 of Your Sinclair which you pdf'd.
Page 31 carries an advert for the artist 2, which has been scanned in portrait mode, when that particular page wants flipping around so it is in landscape mode.
Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5853332/BigK_Magazine_Complete_Issues_01-12_OCR__d_PDFs.5853332.TPB.torrent
Magnet:[URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:196bf5804011fc0e10aba14e3036b9970a56ff77&dn=BigK+Magazine+Complete+Issues+01-12+OCR%5C%27d+PDFs&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:196bf5804011fc0e10aba14e3036b9970a56ff77&dn=BigK+Magazine+Complete+Issues+01-12+OCR%5C%27d+PDFs&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%2Fannounce[/URL]
C+VG is crunching away as I write this, so that should be next, followed by Your Computer.
I think there's a few of these - especially in The Tipshop, where they sometimes carried maps in portrait format. I might go back through the PDFs in the future and correct them ... it's on my "to-do" list :)
I kept my promise and I'm still seeding the 4 torrents, but it looks like only DHT peers are able to connect now. Maybe it's gone from the tracker?
However, I noticed that in issue 93 page 31 (second part of The Write Stuff) is missing - there is a scan of page 34 (Robocop advert) instead.
C+VG has hopefully just finished OCR'ing, I need to do a bit of tidying up of filenames etc and it'll be online by this weekend. It's gonna be a big one :-o
It looks like this was a mistake in the original WoS scans - I've checked the archive and pages 31 and 34 are identical :( If someone can rescan page 31 of that issue I can fix the mistake.
Is there any chance of asking Martijn if he'll host these files on WOS? Mine are downloading soooo slowly through bittorrent.
Vampyre, how fast/slow are you downloading? Most of the ones I've done so far are pretty well seeded (relatively speaking); does your ISP traffic shape in any way?
Fair enuf!!
At home I'm pulling Amtix and Your Sinclair at around 5-10kps. This is on Virgin Media's 50meg BB, no idea if they're shaping traffic but I would certainly suspect so. There's not many seeders to either.
Thought I'd try getting Sinclair User from work which is a 100meg leased line and it's grabbing those at the moment at 2.5kps. There's only 3 seeds and 4 peers on that so I would expect this to be slow (it has at some points hit 150kps though).
Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5864540/Computer_and_Video_Games_Magazine_001-126_OCR__d_PDFs.5864540.TPB.torrent
Magnet: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d4531f42648492a88376f6ef9bb8d4fac3ee02ab&dn=Computer+and+Video+Games+Magazine+001-126+OCR%5C%27d+PDFs&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.prq.to%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d4531f42648492a88376f6ef9bb8d4fac3ee02ab&dn=Computer+and+Video+Games+Magazine+001-126+OCR%5C%27d+PDFs&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.prq.to%2Fannounce[/URL]
Next: Your Computer, then maybe an Amstrad title ;) Microhobby definitely on the list!
Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5921857/Your_Computer_Magazine_June_1981_-_Apr_1988_incomplete_OCR__d_PD.5921857.TPB.torrent
Magnet: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:2a79f5adac2ad6252f1628f1724c8defa9c2168c&dn=Your+Computer+Magazine+June+1981+-+Apr+1988+incomplete+OCR%5C%27d+PD&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:2a79f5adac2ad6252f1628f1724c8defa9c2168c&dn=Your+Computer+Magazine+June+1981+-+Apr+1988+incomplete+OCR%5C%27d+PD&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%2Fannounce[/URL]
Next: Viva Espa?ia :)
On a non-Sinclair note, if anyone has a stash of Amiga/ST magazines that they'd be willing to sacrifice to my scalpel and my scanner for the good of future generations, please PM me - I've been practicing on a few of my son's Official Nintendo Magazines and I reckon I've got the debinding process perfected :)
Torrent link: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/6204389/Micro_Hobby_Magazine_issue_1-217_complete_OCR__d_PDFs.6204389.TPB.torrent
Magnet link: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:&dn=Micro+Hobby+Magazine+issue+1-217+complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDFs&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:&dn=Micro+Hobby+Magazine+issue+1-217+complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDFs&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80%2Fannounce[/URL]
Next: Amstrad Action, or possible Zzap 64. Sorry, running out of Spectrum mags :evil:
ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/magazines/MicroHobbyEspecial/
The MicroHobby torrent has (to my surprise) been by far the most popular torrent I've done so far. I've also just taken deliver of a huge pile of old Amiga mags, which I'm going to hack to bits and shove through my scanner - this will take months (years?) but I'll get there eventually :-)
Zzap 64 is done also, I'll let this one seed for a little bit first before uploading the details here. Seeding should be pretty fast right now as I've "borrowed" some bandwidth; it's only temporary so grab this quick!
Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/6237605/Amstrad_Action_magazine_issues_1-117_complete_OCR__d_PDFs.6237605.TPB.torrent
Magnet: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d84a622c01f75280bbff3b39f12b759f82baf3ab&dn=Amstrad+Action+magazine+issues+1-117+complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDFs&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d84a622c01f75280bbff3b39f12b759f82baf3ab&dn=Amstrad+Action+magazine+issues+1-117+complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDFs&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80%2Fannounce[/URL]
I've got a *huge* list of mags coming some time this decade: The Games Machine, Amiga Power, Amiga Format, Amiga Shopper, CU Amiga, ACE, The One, Your Commodore, New Computer Express, Zero and much more. Afraid there's not a lot of them Speccy-related, but please let me know if you have a favourite and I'll bump it up the "to be completed" list.
EDIT: here we go, after an exhaustive (well, exhausting) rake, I reckon after consolidating the WoS issues and the ones I have here, I'll have all issues apart from:
6,8,23,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,38,39,40,41,42,43,46,47,48,50,54,57,58,61,63,69,72,73,74,79,81,83,87,88,89,90,92,103 and 106
If anyone knows where to get any of these issues, please let me know. I've got nearly 60 issues to scan, so it's going to take me a while to get them done anyway.
Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/6237673/Zzap_64____Commodore_Force_magazine_issue_1-107_complete_OCR__d_.6237673.TPB.torrent
Magnet: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:77c016950be0783cdd14e279a0b4cc2d378e3836&dn=Zzap+64%21+%2F+Commodore+Force+magazine+issue+1-107+complete+OCR%5C%27d+&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:77c016950be0783cdd14e279a0b4cc2d378e3836&dn=Zzap+64%21+%2F+Commodore+Force+magazine+issue+1-107+complete+OCR%5C%27d+&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80%2Fannounce[/URL]
I would advertise the links on Speccy.org, but if I'm not mistaken they don't allow urls pointing to torrent sites... I wonder if someone already posted all these links on c.s.s. and e.c.s.s...
Now imagine browsing all these magazines on your favorite touchscreen tablet!