On Thu, 24 Feb 1994, Sarah C. Pierce wrote:
 
> HOW TO PUT TOGETHER AN IMAGE DIGITIZATION SYSTEM IN 3 EASY STEPS
> (by Christina Silcox, Research Asst.)
> #1 Internal:  This is your base system.  You must have a MAC 840 or better
> with 16 meg RAM and at least 230 mb of hard disk.  This is the bare
> minimum.  If you have anything smaller you will crash! Add to this
> internally a radius color board for millions of colors.  256 colors, which
> is standard will not allow you to view an image in its true form.  You
> will need to add a scratch disk of at least 1 gb, yes, that's 1 gigabyte.
> This is where you will store and manipulate your images.
 
While Apple is touting the Mac Quadra 840AV as *THE* AV machine until the
Power PC's are more available, don't believe EVERYTHING you read on the
list...the 840 can be a VERY cranky machine, especially with Photoshop
2.5.1. (And, yes, I have used the machine -- several of them...) The
speed of the '040 processor is nice, but for the price differnce, you can
pick up a IIci, add a DayStar accelerator (getting the '040 chip), and
still be able to add enough RAM to really make it work. 16Mb gets tight
VERY quickly -- give SERIOUS thought to 32Mb or more...You can't have too
much RAM, too big of a hard drive or too big of a monitor!
 
> #2  External:  This is your monitor.  A 17 inch VGA is preferable.  5 or 6
Don't skimp here...you'll be staring at the thing for hours...
 
 {stuff deleted}
  DAT tape drive.  This is 1gb of tape
> storage for back up.  You can't read from a dat drive and you cannot write
> to a dat drive.  But you can store to and restore from a dat tape and that
> sure beats the you know what out of doing 100 floppies for a back up.  You
> can use the SYQUEST for back up but it is only 44 mb.
 
SYQUEST sells removable media (cartridge) drives in 44Mb, 88Mb, 105Mb,
and shipping now, 270Mb (!) sizes. The latter two sizes are on a 3 1/2"
form, so it makes for a highly portable unit. If you opt to do back-up on
DAT, MAKE SURE YOU CAN RESTORE FROM IT. Find the easy way -- try it out
when you don't NEED to to do the restore.
 
> SCANNERS: One Nikon slide single slide scanner costs about 1800.00.
> Stackable scanner does 300 slides at a time and costs about 6500.00.  Buy
> only Nikon or Kodak scanners.  The Mira 35 and off brand scanner will
> break down in no time at all.  I broke a Mira 35 doing about 500 slides
> this summer.
> HP LASERJET flat bed scanner does books, photographs, magazines.
> I also purchased a CD ROM drive for viewing images that we will buy from
> Saskia.  You buy the copright with the CD.
> Of course the hard part is getting the funding.  See,jsobre at this
> address for the ins and outs of cash flow.
>
 
Don't mean to sound negative, but there is an awful lot of
well-intentioned misinformation about the *minimum* requirements for
doing this kind of work. My advice on the basic box would be to hold off
a little longer (if you can) and consider the Power PCs. There faster
than any non-UNIX box out there (including the Pentiums, heh, heh, heh)
that we lesser mortals can get, will run both Windoze and MAc software,
and that old graphics warhorse, Photoshop, positively screams. Bottom
line? Buy more RAM than you think you'll need in your wildest dreams,
spend the rest on hard drives, back up systems, and monitors.
 
 
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Dennis Moser                     I once declared that we            *
[log in to unmask]                  should digitize it all...          *
[log in to unmask]          Now I may be the last humanist     *
(517)764-6264                    to go through SILS...              *
School of Information and Library Studies & Museum Practice Program *
                        University of Michigan                      *
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro"...attributed to the *
one and the only Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, who I hope forgives this...*
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