A sign of the times ...

[Arfa Daily]

In my workshop, I have four four-drawer filing cabinets absolutely
jam-packed with service manuals that I have collected over more than 40
years in the business. The thing is, that I almost never go to them any
more. My first stop is almost always the archive of downloaded manuals on
the computer, and if the one I want is not there, then online to one of the
excellent archives to be found there, to download it. And if I can't find
one, then the item is probably not worth the fixing time anyway.

So, even though it's been a bit heart-wrenching, I've started ditching all
the old paper manuals, with a view to getting rid of three of those
cabinets, and winning back the space. As well as doing this, I have also
been sorting out the many many cabinets of small spares, and been seriously
rationalising what is kept. It's really hard, and I keep thinking "I'm gonna
need that next week" as something else goes in the bin. But at the same
time, it is also sort of 'invigorating' to be restoring some order and
tidiness to the workshop.

Has anyone else been through this process and felt better for it at the end,
or am I just going to regret doing it for years to come ... ?

Arfa

 

[John Robertson]

On 12/03/2014, 5:42 PM, Arfa Daily wrote:

In my workshop, I have four four-drawer filing cabinets absolutely
jam-packed with service manuals that I have collected over more than 40
years in the business. The thing is, that I almost never go to them any
more. My first stop is almost always the archive of downloaded manuals
on the computer, and if the one I want is not there, then online to one
of the excellent archives to be found there, to download it. And if I
can't find one, then the item is probably not worth the fixing time anyway.

So, even though it's been a bit heart-wrenching, I've started ditching
all the old paper manuals, with a view to getting rid of three of those
cabinets, and winning back the space. As well as doing this, I have also
been sorting out the many many cabinets of small spares, and been
seriously rationalising what is kept. It's really hard, and I keep
thinking "I'm gonna need that next week" as something else goes in the
bin. But at the same time, it is also sort of 'invigorating' to be
restoring some order and tidiness to the workshop.

Has anyone else been through this process and felt better for it at the
end, or am I just going to regret doing it for years to come ... ?

Arfa

Well, I have about ten filing cabinets in my shop and while a reasonable
percentage is online, most of it is not. So I slowly scan them as we
have time and add to our internal library.

I have no intention of dumping the paper, it is my archive.

John :-#)#

--
(Please post followups or tech inquiries to the newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
(604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 4 Dec 2014 01:42:14 -0000, "Arfa Daily"
<arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Has anyone else been through this process and felt better for it at the end,
or am I just going to regret doing it for years to come ... ?

Yep. I have a similar problem. Most of the "recent" manuals, which
means in the 30 years, I've recycled or sold. They're all available
in PDF form somewhere. The really old stuff, dating back to the
1960's through 1980's, I'll keep for now, as they're often difficult
to find. I've been scanning these as needed, and posting them to
various public archives. However, since there's no money in doing
this, it's a very low priority for me. Fortunately, I have an easy
way to do the scans. One of my customers has a Canon ImageRunner 5000
copier, that will do double sided scan and OCR reads to PDF very
quickly. Video of the machine in operation:
<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/crud/CanonImageRunner5000.wmv>

A much bigger problem is how to organize manuals and driver CD's. The
recent stuff can usually be found online, but the old stuff is long
gone and difficult to find. I have several large boxes full of
disorganized CD's, that require a linear search through the mess every
time I need something. I think of it as a miniature version of the
service manual problem.

About a year ago, I purged my office of floppy disks, keeping only
those that I suspected I might need. Since then, I've spent an
inordinate amount of time finding images of the one's I tossed.
However, I expect that problem to be only temporary, as I'm refusing
to work on any antique computers, which also allows me to toss old
power supplies, cables, PCB's, etc. That's much easier than running
an antique computah warehouse.

I suspect that you'll be quite happy with scanned manuals. There's
not as handy as the printed variety, but they do have the advantage of
being searchable, which makes them quite superior to printed manuals.
If you're scanning to PDF, try:
<http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer> (free)
which has a built in OCR reader which can be used to make scanned
PDF's searchable.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Michael Black]

On Wed, 3 Dec 2014, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Thu, 4 Dec 2014 01:42:14 -0000, "Arfa Daily"
arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:

Has anyone else been through this process and felt better for it at the end,
or am I just going to regret doing it for years to come ... ?

Yep. I have a similar problem. Most of the "recent" manuals, which
means in the 30 years, I've recycled or sold. They're all available
in PDF form somewhere. The really old stuff, dating back to the
1960's through 1980's, I'll keep for now, as they're often difficult
to find. I've been scanning these as needed, and posting them to
various public archives. However, since there's no money in doing
this, it's a very low priority for me. Fortunately, I have an easy
way to do the scans. One of my customers has a Canon ImageRunner 5000
copier, that will do double sided scan and OCR reads to PDF very
quickly. Video of the machine in operation:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/crud/CanonImageRunner5000.wmv

That actually describes the issue.

More recent stuff was done in digital form to begin with, so it was only a
matter of putting it online.

Older material requires scanning, and that takes time and maybe money, so
it's less likely to appear.

If it begins in digital form, the cost of putting it online is minimal.

Even the US patent office, which has all the patents online, has mere
scans of the patents up to a certain year, it being too much trouble to
turn them into text, while after that certain year, it was done
electronically anyway, so full searches can be done on those later
patents.

Michael

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 3 Dec 2014 23:54:55 -0500, Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:

Even the US patent office, which has all the patents online, has mere
scans of the patents up to a certain year, it being too much trouble to
turn them into text, while after that certain year, it was done
electronically anyway, so full searches can be done on those later
patents.

Not really. The USPTO has just scans, but if you use Google Patent
search, the PDF files were all fed to an OCR reader and are
searchable. I just tried some really early patents and they were all
searchable. The basic text of the patent, in searchable ASCII, is
also available on the Google Patent search pages:
<https://www.google.com/patents/>
<http://www.google.com/advanced_patent_search>
Unfortunately, Google made a mess of the OCR reading on some patents,
so don't expect perfection.

For my own devious purposes, I make sure that all my PDF manuals are
OCR read and searchable. I then use a text search tool, such as Agent
Ransack, to find the manuals or search the contents:
<http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack>
Some manuals arrive in MS Word format, which Agent Ransack can also
handle if I enable the "search MS Office format" checkbox.

It's a long way from the paperless office, but it's a lurch in the
right direction.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Mark Zacharias]

"Arfa Daily" <arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:XZOfw.51090$GK1.22488@fx36.am4...

In my workshop, I have four four-drawer filing cabinets absolutely
jam-packed with service manuals that I have collected over more than 40
years in the business. The thing is, that I almost never go to them any
more. My first stop is almost always the archive of downloaded manuals on
the computer, and if the one I want is not there, then online to one of
the excellent archives to be found there, to download it. And if I can't
find one, then the item is probably not worth the fixing time anyway.

So, even though it's been a bit heart-wrenching, I've started ditching all
the old paper manuals, with a view to getting rid of three of those
cabinets, and winning back the space. As well as doing this, I have also
been sorting out the many many cabinets of small spares, and been
seriously rationalising what is kept. It's really hard, and I keep
thinking "I'm gonna need that next week" as something else goes in the
bin. But at the same time, it is also sort of 'invigorating' to be
restoring some order and tidiness to the workshop.

Has anyone else been through this process and felt better for it at the
end, or am I just going to regret doing it for years to come ... ?

Arfa

Oh, yes. We have tons of old Hitachi, Sony, JVC, RCA etc vcr manuals,
Pioneer crt big-screen manuals, and on and on. Better off just to throw them
away. Way back when, they were golden.

I do think that when I retire I can pick a bit of change selling original
McIntosh, Marantz, Denon, Kenwood etc audio manuals on eBay.

Even have a collection of old B&O manuals I suspect I could get fairly good
money for.

Sign of the times indeed - I mostly use digital copies anymore also. Big 24"
monitor on the bench helps the old eyes.


Mark Z.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

I compulsively collected service manuals -- especially for the Sony products I
owned -- and, as you've seen, that collecting came in handy just yesterday.

When I was a kid, the Enoch Pratt Free Library * had volumes of the Rider
service manuals, which I sometimes pored over.

I would be cautious about destroying them. You'd probably be better off boxing
them, and putting the boxes in a safe, dry place until you find someone who'll
give them a good home.

* For those who aren't Baltimorons... The Pratt library was endowed by a
wealthy merchant. It was (and probably still is) considered one of the world's
great public libraries. It was the first place to go when I had to do research
for high school papers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Pratt_Free_Library

 

[Phil Allison]

Arfa Daily wrote:

In my workshop, I have four four-drawer filing cabinets absolutely
jam-packed with service manuals that I have collected over more than 40
years in the business.

** Wow, I have hardly any after 40 years in the same business.

Here in Australia, service manuals for most pro audio products have long been hard to get and/or cost real money. The info (other than a schematic) provided in the vast majority is so poor as to be worthless. I am thinking of manuals from Crown, Yamaha, QSC, Phase Linear and others.

One problem is that the folk who write these manuals are never service techs. Often the product designer is given the job or some one associated with the design team who picked the short straw. If you have never made your living doing bench servicing, how in hell can you expect to advise those that do ?

Another problem is that at the time of writing, no actual products have been sold so none of the product's design faults or reliability issues have come to light. Most manufacturers are unwilling to put anything potentially damaging to their reputations into print in any case - lest a customer might see it!

I needed a schem for the EV 2.0kW power amp a few year back and was offered a full manual for $20 from the local EV agents. When it arrived it was a joke. All the schematics were drawn without dots - you simply could not tell if any two lines that crossed at right angles were joined at that point or not !!

I rang to complain and was immediately told they are all like that - sorry.

The manual for the Crown PSA-2 amplifier has procedures for testing the amp after repairs have been done. The final test is for the VI limiter and involves driving each channel at 20V rms into a 1 ohm load. What the manual writer did not take into account is that if the VI limiter circuit *fails* to operate correctly, that channel will instantly blow up! Hell of a test - eh.

Manuals for many QSC amps ( USA series etc) give details on connecting an output transformer to convert the amps for 70V line operation. QSC even sell a 300W transformer for the job. But don't you dare do it !

The current limiting scheme QSC use is a real oddball and works only with resistive loads. Soon as a low or subsonic frequency comes along, the iron core in the output tranny saturates and instantly blows up the amp. One of my customers found out the hard way after and simultaneously destroying four brand new USA900s.

Over the years, I have had to evolve my own methods of safely bench testing amplifiers, before and after repairs, including non invasive setting of bias levels and checking VI limiters for correct operation into reactive dummy loads.

Far as I am concerned, Service Manuals are mainly for light entertainment reading.


..... Phil

 

>"Far as I am concerned, Service Manuals are mainly for light entertainment >reading. "

You forgot to mention the errors. I mean on the perfect copies. The really nice ones with no pixelisation or anything. Yup, the wire has 12 volts on it here, but over there has zero. Happens all the time.

You know it almost seems like they want nobody to b able to fix this shit, or be able to understand how it really works to fix this shit. and that is not just Walmart shit either.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

One of the ways companies keep down the price of their cheaper products is to
cram everything -- including hundreds of SMDs -- onto one PCB. Such products
are all-but unrepairable.

 

[Michael Black]

On Sun, 7 Dec 2014, jurb6006@gmail.com wrote:

"Far as I am concerned, Service Manuals are mainly for light entertainment >reading. "

You forgot to mention the errors. I mean on the perfect copies. The
really nice ones with no pixelisation or anything. Yup, the wire has 12
volts on it here, but over there has zero. Happens all the time.

You know it almost seems like they want nobody to b able to fix this
shit, or be able to understand how it really works to fix this shit. and
that is not just Walmart shit either.

But that's in fact true.

In the old days, equipment was assembled by hand, which made repair easy.
And parts were generally generic.

As solid state came along, there was a transistion to robotic type
assembly. And increasingly parts became specific. Both made it really
easy to manufacture, which brought prices down. You can even see that. I
paid $500 for my first printer, dot-matrix, in 1982, and it was a lousy
printer. Now you can get a wide variety of inkjet printers (so much
better) or laser printers (best) for under a hundred dollars. They've
done lots to simplify manufacturing in order to bring that price down.

But the result is a really hard to repair device. The company likely will
just board swap, if things get that far.

Between competition that means endless changes (and thus a short
production life) and a design that may only last one production run,
the parts and design may change between versions of the equipment. That
makes it even harder to keep track of those custom parts being used.

People want things cheap. I didnt' buy a DVD player until I could get one
for about sixty dollars. I bought modems when they were a hundred dollars
each, but most people wouldn't. I bought printers for hundreds of
dollars, but most people won't. The only way to make things cheap is to
cut costs, in terms of parts and manufacturing. And that means things
become harder and harder to repair.

Micahel

 

[Cydrome Leader]

Arfa Daily <arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:

In my workshop, I have four four-drawer filing cabinets absolutely
jam-packed with service manuals that I have collected over more than 40
years in the business. The thing is, that I almost never go to them any
more. My first stop is almost always the archive of downloaded manuals on
the computer, and if the one I want is not there, then online to one of the
excellent archives to be found there, to download it. And if I can't find
one, then the item is probably not worth the fixing time anyway.

So, even though it's been a bit heart-wrenching, I've started ditching all
the old paper manuals, with a view to getting rid of three of those
cabinets, and winning back the space. As well as doing this, I have also
been sorting out the many many cabinets of small spares, and been seriously
rationalising what is kept. It's really hard, and I keep thinking "I'm gonna
need that next week" as something else goes in the bin. But at the same
time, it is also sort of 'invigorating' to be restoring some order and
tidiness to the workshop.

Has anyone else been through this process and felt better for it at the end,
or am I just going to regret doing it for years to come ... ?

I run out of space and toss stuff, but never think "I'm so glad I threw
that away" years later. With no doubt many publications have not and will
not be scanned, or if they are many are just unusable due to poor quality.

Good quality manuals are fun too read too. I think I still have the plain
manual for a Franklin apple ][ clone that had a well presented and full
schematic- it was standard docs that shipped with the machine. Apple never
bothered with this.

 

[mike]

On 12/30/2014 8:12 PM, Cydrome Leader wrote:

Arfa Daily <arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:
In my workshop, I have four four-drawer filing cabinets absolutely
jam-packed with service manuals that I have collected over more than 40
years in the business. The thing is, that I almost never go to them any
more. My first stop is almost always the archive of downloaded manuals on
the computer, and if the one I want is not there, then online to one of the
excellent archives to be found there, to download it. And if I can't find
one, then the item is probably not worth the fixing time anyway.

So, even though it's been a bit heart-wrenching, I've started ditching all
the old paper manuals, with a view to getting rid of three of those
cabinets, and winning back the space. As well as doing this, I have also
been sorting out the many many cabinets of small spares, and been seriously
rationalising what is kept. It's really hard, and I keep thinking "I'm gonna
need that next week" as something else goes in the bin. But at the same
time, it is also sort of 'invigorating' to be restoring some order and
tidiness to the workshop.

Has anyone else been through this process and felt better for it at the end,
or am I just going to regret doing it for years to come ... ?

I run out of space and toss stuff, but never think "I'm so glad I threw
that away" years later. With no doubt many publications have not and will
not be scanned, or if they are many are just unusable due to poor quality.

Good quality manuals are fun too read too. I think I still have the plain
manual for a Franklin apple ][ clone that had a well presented and full
schematic- it was standard docs that shipped with the machine. Apple never
bothered with this.

One problem is that some manuals were never converted to PDF and are simply
not available anywhere. I wanted to program a GAL20V8. There was no
information available anywhere. Fortunately, I saved the original databook.

In 2010, I replaced my carpets with wood flooring.
I had to remove everything from the rooms. When I put it back,
I sorted/compacted/organized the stuff.
It's 2015 and the family room still looks like a hoarders fantasy
with piles of stuff that I'm gonna throw out...I promise...
Yes, I live alone ;-)

After marathon trips to the thrift store and/or the dump,
it usually takes me about a week to realize that the thing I
really, really need today was in the last purge.
The opposite side of that coin is that if I hadn't purged it,
I probably wouldn't be able to find it anyway.

I have most of what I need on one Anthro Cart in front of my
easy chair. But I still have to move something to make a space
to put down a coffee cup.
If I threw away everything I haven't touched in a decade,
the place would be barren.

 

[Cydrome Leader]

mike <ham789@netzero.net> wrote:

On 12/30/2014 8:12 PM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
Arfa Daily <arfa.daily@ntlworld.com> wrote:
In my workshop, I have four four-drawer filing cabinets absolutely
jam-packed with service manuals that I have collected over more than 40
years in the business. The thing is, that I almost never go to them any
more. My first stop is almost always the archive of downloaded manuals on
the computer, and if the one I want is not there, then online to one of the
excellent archives to be found there, to download it. And if I can't find
one, then the item is probably not worth the fixing time anyway.

So, even though it's been a bit heart-wrenching, I've started ditching all
the old paper manuals, with a view to getting rid of three of those
cabinets, and winning back the space. As well as doing this, I have also
been sorting out the many many cabinets of small spares, and been seriously
rationalising what is kept. It's really hard, and I keep thinking "I'm gonna
need that next week" as something else goes in the bin. But at the same
time, it is also sort of 'invigorating' to be restoring some order and
tidiness to the workshop.

Has anyone else been through this process and felt better for it at the end,
or am I just going to regret doing it for years to come ... ?

I run out of space and toss stuff, but never think "I'm so glad I threw
that away" years later. With no doubt many publications have not and will
not be scanned, or if they are many are just unusable due to poor quality.

Good quality manuals are fun too read too. I think I still have the plain
manual for a Franklin apple ][ clone that had a well presented and full
schematic- it was standard docs that shipped with the machine. Apple never
bothered with this.

One problem is that some manuals were never converted to PDF and are simply
not available anywhere. I wanted to program a GAL20V8. There was no
information available anywhere. Fortunately, I saved the original databook.

In 2010, I replaced my carpets with wood flooring.
I had to remove everything from the rooms. When I put it back,
I sorted/compacted/organized the stuff.
It's 2015 and the family room still looks like a hoarders fantasy
with piles of stuff that I'm gonna throw out...I promise...
Yes, I live alone ;-)

After marathon trips to the thrift store and/or the dump,
it usually takes me about a week to realize that the thing I
really, really need today was in the last purge.
The opposite side of that coin is that if I hadn't purged it,
I probably wouldn't be able to find it anyway.

I have most of what I need on one Anthro Cart in front of my
easy chair. But I still have to move something to make a space
to put down a coffee cup.
If I threw away everything I haven't touched in a decade,
the place would be barren.

I like "stuff" so the last project was putting up tall shelving along some
walls. It beats stacks of boxes and Akro-bins. Some stuff just doesn't fit
and most projects live on fiberglass cafeteria type trays, which can't be
stacked so they take up table tops. Like gas, I can fill any amount of
space presented with no problem.