Information

[Bryanj]

Does anybody have, or know of, facilities for printing/converting to pdf hard copy from microfiche? I have "aquired" an offical hoda fiche with all the old technical data on it.

[SteveD CB500K0]

You can do this at home, but…

Most/all home scanners have nowhere near enough resolution to scan a fiche.

How many pages do you have?

I can probably find a company to scan this for us (and maybe “crowd fund” it)


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[SteveD CB500K0]

Unless of course, someone on here has the kit?

James?


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[JamesH]

Only facilities I know now are local library archives..sadly I don’t have the facilities here..

[SteveD CB500K0]

We need a flatbed scanner with 7000-10,000 dpi resolution.

Mine goes to 6,400 but only using some fancy interpolation algorithm which won’t help on a small fiche.


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[K2-K6]

There are some services offered as many archives used microfilm etc to store documents.

Search for "microfiche to digital " for services.  May be too commercial and involved for this scenario,  plus copyright potentially.

As a rough any ready test,  use masking tape to stick a sample to a window in daylight, then see what you can resolve with something like a phone camera at close range.

Ideally you need the smallest sized sensor (physical dimensions)  with the highest megapixel count, combined with the closest focus ability.

If you can get it onto the chip at something aproaching life size,  then the software will handle the viewing size. Plus being monochromatic,  it should give decent sharpening to the details.

[AndyD]

Morning,
I've got a big old microfiche scanner in the garage at home - I can check this evening if it's working OK and if so happy to scan and convert to a pdf if you'd like.

Cheers,
Andy

[Bryanj]

Andy thats great. If it works pm me your address and i will post it to you then put pdf copies up for all

[K2-K6]

That's a bit of a result,  surprising what we keep in our garages.

[AndyD]

Spent a happy half hour dusting down the scanner and all seems to be working fine after a quick play so happy to give it a go. I’ll drop a pm with my address.

Had a phase a few years ago buying fiches for no real reason except they were cheap and vaguely interesting! Ended up with hundreds of them so needed something to make them useful for the bikes I wanted to restore and found this scanner which came from the Bank of England. Huge beast but so far has worked well to get fiches into the pc.

If you ever have any specific bike fiche you need let me know and I’ll see if I’ve got one here to scan in.

Cheers
Andy

[AndyD]

Bryan - think I’ve sent the pm but please let me know if you don’t get anything as it’s the first time I’ve done it and can’t see where it shows it’s gone. Sorry, bit of a novice on forum thingys!
Cheers
Andy

[SteveD CB500K0]

Andy - in your message section, you have an inbox and a sent messages folder. It will be in there.

Steve


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[Bryanj]

Andy, busy for a few days but will get it posted to you asap. There may be some more parts fiches coming my way but a lot of it is already out there so not always necessary.

[SteveD CB500K0]

Me too.

If we have an in-house system, maybe I’ll go and see if I can find them!


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[AndyD]

No worries
Actually looking at the collection of fiches I lied a bit - it's thousands rather than hundreds of the little blighters!
Lots of duplicates and different issues of the same bikes etc.
Started sorting them into some kind of order so shouldn't be too hard to find what is or isn't there.
Had a quick look and there are quite a few CB500 / 550 fiches and even some US models but I don't know enough about the various models to know if they're all covered etc.
Scanning is a bit of a slow, long-winded process but so far I've made up reasonable parts manuals for some of the bikes I'm working on and for others so happy to have a go if anything specific is needed.
Cheers,
Andy