Sega Documentation Release - Developer's Conservation Project.

Developer's Conservation Project (Tentative name I'm all for better suggestions)
So this was an idea I had when I purchased this Sega lot. Was to find the docuementation and software that Developers have used in the past and try to keep them all in one bundle. It would be nice to be able to have all the dev stuff that is around and to be able to keep track of it (at least the stuff that is shared publicly).

Ok so as many of you may know I purchased a Sega CD Devkit lot a little while back with a whole ton of documentation. My plan is to release everything I've purchased as a part of this project. (still working out details would love some input on this) I don't want to release just a bunch of scattered scans though. I want to clean them up, OCR the text, and in general make them so they aren't painful to read. Here's where the fun part comes in though. I'm brand new to things like this. I've learned a ton about Photoshop in the past few days, but know that I still have tons to learn. So I wanted to release this first manual that I've scanned and cleaned up. It's the SNASM-CD Installation Manual v1.0. I scanned it inat 600 DPI. I've cleaned up the dirt and hole punch marks. I've also tried my best to straighten them out. There were a few pages that looked really bad and still do. Apendix A or page 13 in the PDF. is a little wavy. Not sure what the best way to fix that besides manually straigtening out each letter, or redoing the page (OCR the text and then reinsert the page)

http://www.mediafire.com/?ffse8556m2n6f6g

So I'm looking for feedback on how I can improve or if it needs to be improved. I would like to keep this thread on that topic and will start a new thread for the project it's self when I get all the details figured out.

 

For the ones that are crooked, use free transform and pull the bottom corner (or top) the direction you need to fix it. I'm not 100% sure, but content aware mode might help preserve the text and sharpen it, despite the transformation.
Besides that, I'd love to see a site with a whole archive of things like this. Online documentation for ASSEMbler level hardware is hard enough to come across as it is.

 

Nice start! I love how most Sega docs have Sonic and Tails in the white space. I have one interesting doc (not allowed to publish, I'm afraid) which has Sonic staring at a life box, with a little love heart inside a thought bubble!

I'll be contributing various Cross Products docs soon, mainly the SNASM2 and Sega 32x hardware manuals.

 

Thanks for the suggestion defectx11. I'm also looking forward to working with Headcrab between the two of us we should be able to get a good amount of Sega documentation released.

Any comments on the doc it's self. I was really hoping that some one more expert at photoshop than I am would comment.

Also a Note to any mods paying attention. Would this be better in Technical Documents and Software Tools?

 

Just Sega though? I'd be willing to start an archive for Sony dev hardware manuals...

 

If I come across any I'll be sure to post, but I'm only willing to spend cash on Sega stuff (at least until I start developing for Nintendo and Sony consoles in my project, see blog). I do need a manual for my PS2 TOOL but they're not rare by any means.

 

Point is I'll be getting a lot of that documentation. If you do need me to send you some shopped scans, then by all means I'll do it (when I get the dev hardware).

 

I definitely want to expand this to other systems as well. I figured I would start with Sega because that is what I have. I would love this to entail all systems. Part of why I started this post (and I may not have made this clear) Is I want to put together some standards for the documentation portion of this. For example I scanned this stuff in at 600 dpi. I was thinking a good finalized pdf would look something like this.
150 dpi 1275x1650 8.5 11 page. All cleaned up. Would love more suggestions

 

Awesome, thanks for posting the SNASM-CD installation manual, I have a much better idea of how the unit works now.

The cleaned up and OCR'ed versions are very useful, but I'd suggest where clean-up work has been done, you always provide two sets: One being the raw scans, full resolution directly as they came out of your scanner, and the second being the cleaned up pdf versions. The reason I ask this is because sometimes, particularly with documents that are a little hard to read to begin with, some of the fine details can be hard to make out. I'm thinking especially of schematics and diagrams. In this case, it's occasionally useful to be able to take a peek at the highest quality original scan that's available of that image, in case the detail is a little more obvious there. It's also possible someone else might come along later with a newer program or process to clean up the images, and if he has the original scans, he might be able to build a better pdf version.

I'd also suggest, where possible, adding a bookmarks list for the PDF files could be very useful. If the document itself is broken up into sections (Eg, 1, 2, 3 Appendix A, etc), having those sections setup as bookmarks for the document makes it much easier to navigate.


I've always wanted to setup a wiki or something for documents like this, so that we can not only provide the raw files, but also have with each document a brief description of what it is, and relate documents together. We often have multiple versions of the same document for example, or two documents that describe similar things. It would be good to be able to sort, group, and arrange these documents, as well as provide a sort of "community errata" for each one. Official documents can contain a surprising number of errors.

 

@teancum
Excellent job indeed! Thanks and hope to see more of this!!!
I hope I can help at some point (maybe doing the OCR), but time is never enough... bloody work!

@DefectX11
I'll join the idea of a Sony Documentation project

I do have many PDFs for both PS1 and PS2, though most (if not all) can be found in the interwebs (I don't mention PS3 because AFAIK we cannot share current-gen dev docs/soft in the forum).
There was a thread for PS2 documentation here: http://www.assemblergames.com/forum...S2-Hardware-Documentation-and-Service-Manuals
But all links are dead and it doesn't seem these'll be re-uploaded anytime soon despite requests.

 

@Nemesis I have to agree with you Raw scans are definitely important and if it does turn out that in the future that someone can do something better with them then I need to make sure they are available. At least that's what I would want.

I like the idea of a wiki. Which would be handy I just don't know if I would dare host the thing. What I was thinking of doing was making a Dat file (like used with roms.) to keep track of releases. I figured it could be done in different sections and that way it would make it easy to know what you have and make it easier to spread. I was thinking of doing it by Console and dividing it by sections. for example

Developers Conservation Project - Sega Mega Drive - Mega CD - 32x - Documentation
Developers Conservation Project - Sega Mega Drive - Mega CD - 32x - Software
Developers Conservation Project - Sony Playstation 2 - Documentation
Developers Conservation Project - Sony Playstation 2 - Software.
etc etc

I figured that way people could grab the sets they want. I was thinking that we could tag them some how as well. For example.
DCP = Documents that have been cleaned up, ocred, with bookmarks, and stuff.
RAW = Raw scans scanned for the project.
OLD = Old documentation that has been floating around for a while (like the Rex Sabio docs)

Would love to here more feedback.

@pool7 Welcome aboard. (what your aboard is still being figured out lol)

 

Eh... Eh... EH...
No PS1?

Oh, I see that "etc etc" down there. OK, nevermind.

I'd be super interested in seriously helping out with this. Either Wiki or an actual website works, but I feel a website will allow for more expansion, should this take off.
I also am quite enjoying that software is going to be uploaded too- That's going to be a major need for the people who have the kits, but nothing to run. Once again, I'll be more than willing to help for Sony software.
For PS3 "stuffs"; hidden pages

 

Hey, just wanted to check how things are going with this project? I'm still very interested in this idea. It seems like there's a real need to provide a central repository for this kind of stuff, and not only the documentation, but related software too. Are you still planning to do the other document releases?

 

Hey,

I've been really busy with work unfortunately, but it's still in the back of my mind. I'm eyeing up a few scanners on eBay, and still waiting on the ZAX manuals (Dano2k8 is also really busy). I'll post an update as soon as I get 5 mins to myself

 

About the same as headcrab. Have been really busy. The next thing I plan on doing is the SNASM2 Manual.

 

ZAX manuals arrived!



I just need some spare time now. Can someone sell me some of that?

I'll do my best to get cracking on it this weekend, but no promises unfortunately.

 

Why would you scan at 600dpi? That's ridiculously high and an unnecessary waste of space. We print photographs at 300dpi. There's no need to scan text and diagrams any higher than 300dpi. Even half of that is acceptable. Web resolution (72dpi) is getting a bit low quality.

There's no need to give your scans out, too. Just produce a nice PDF, using higher quality images where necessary. Of course, if most of your stuff is going into an OCR, then even 300dpi is overkill.

If you are scanning to OCR and want it to look the same, don't forget that Sega used commercial fonts such as Helvetica back then. You'd need a license to use them now.

 

ABBYY finereader is pretty good with OCR.

 

I figure I can always drop the resolution but raising it later is always harder. I can't say that I'm an expert though they don't take up too much room so I picked 600 dpi and have just stuck with that. The final PDF I left in 150 DPI. I'm all for recomendations.

Let me know if you find a good seller of spare time! lol

 

Just a quick update: I've taken delivery of a Saturn SH2 ICE unit with ISA card and - more importantly - the SH2 Programming Manual:



I also have the PDS Assembler and Editor manuals (Commodore 64) as well as a DRAFT of the GASP preprocessor manual (seems to be some sort of preprocessor addon for assemblers, adds macro functionality, etc). The manual is a beast, who'd have thought a preprocessor could be so complex...



I'll add all of these to the TODO list for scanning. Again, apologies for the delay in getting these scanned in, I'm super super busy at work