classicamiga magazine archive

[Harrison]

The Classicamiga Magazine Archive

Classicamiga is about to begin its Amiga magazine archive. The aim of this project is to try and collect together as complete as possible a collection of all Amiga magazines ever published.

The archive will work as a directory on the main classicamiga site and will allow the visitor to browse via publication and issue. Each issue will have its own page that will include the following:
List of contents for the issue including reviews for quick reference.
Selected image scans from the magazine including cover, contents page and cover disk contents pages that can be directly viewed on the site.
Images of the cover disk labels (where available).
Downloads for the original cover disks in ADF format (where available).
Download of the complete magazine in PDF format.
Members will be able to review each magazine, giving there point of view, as well as being able to leave a short comment about it too.The magazines will be available as PDF downloads, created by scanning the complete magazine in page by page, and including every page to preserve the complete publication as it was originally printed. This will therefore include all adverts as well as content.

Where possible the original Cover mounted disks included with each magazine will also be available for download as ADF files.

We need your help

This is going to be a very big project and take a lot of time and effort to complete. Classicamiga is therefore asking for anyone who can help out with this project.

We need the following:
People who still have original Amiga magazines.
People who still have original Amiga Cover discs for magazines.
Members willing to scan their magazines in and create the PDFs (following the classicamiga guidelines that will be available very soon).
People willing to scan the cover disks in so that images of the original disk labels can be included.
People willing to donate their magazines to classicamiga for this project.If you still have some original Amiga magazines please let us know in case we are missing these issues, and if you have a scanner and are willing to scan the complete magazine in for the site that would be a great help to classicamiga.

We are especially interested in finding people with non UK Amiga publications that can help out with the site. German, French, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish etc... and also US and Australian publications.

We already have the server space setup ready to host the magazines for download. We now just need to get scanning.

Let us know what you have

Please use this thread to post lists of the magazines (and the specific issues) you have available and also state if you are able to scan them for the site, or if you would be willing to donate them to classicamiga for scanning. If possible the magazines would be returned to their original owners after the scanning is complete.

[Harrison]

To begin I will start to list what I have:

Amiga Format
CU Amiga
AUi
Amiga Computing
CD32 Gamer
Amiga World (US)

I will fill in the issues of each I have once I have time to check them.

[Demon Cleaner]

Great, but unfortunately we had no such magazines here, so I cannot help at all.

[Submeg]

I wonder if there is anything at the newsagent these days for the Amiga? The only thing I can think of is retrogamer....but then that really isnt Amiga only

[Demon Cleaner]

I have all retrogamer (only missing issues 1-3), and I'm subscribed to it. But I don't think they would allow us to post articles of their magazines on our site.

[Harrison]

It's more the magazines from the Amiga days themselves that we need for the site, rather than anything looking back on the Amiga in a retro way these days.

[Submeg]

Fair enough. I think there were a couple of Amiga publications back in the day, but not anymore I feel.

[Harrison]

Maybe in another 5-10 years when the magazines of today are retro we can add them to the site. :D

[Submeg]

Lol man by the time everything is scanned and imported it will be....might as well start now! Lol so many mags!

[AlexJ]

Can't really help with the magazines but can definately scan coverdisks. Will try and get a list done of what I have this weekend.

Amiga Format
47
52a,52b
54a,54b
56a,56b
57a,57b
58a,58b
60a,60b,60c
63a,63b
66a,66b
68a,68b
70b
75a
(No number - contains PD-DIY, Adorage & ProTracker V2.10B)

Amiga Action

Aug 94 - Disk 1
Xmas 94 - Disk 1,2,3,4
Nov 95 - Disk 1,2
Mar 95 - Disk 1,2
Apr 95 - Disk 1,4
Aug 95 - Disk 1,2
Sept 95 - Disk 1,2
Undated:
Disk 2 - Brutal Sports Football
Disk 1 - Gunship 2000
Disk 2 - Syndicate
Nick Faldo's Golf & Cytron
Disk 1 - Blastar, F1 Challenge, Battle Cars 2
Disk 1 - Hired Guns, Deathbringer
Disk 1 - Stardust, Universal Warrior
Disk 2 - Tensai, Grav Attack
Alien Breed '92
Disk 2 - Donk, Assault

[Teho]

Well, I can do:

Exec (complete run)
Amiga Forum (complete run)
Megabyte (complete. ie, both of them)

These are all norwegian. I'm pretty certain I have all the belonging coverdisks too, but will have to check before promising anything. Other than that, I have some random issues of english and german magazines lying around. When I'm done with those norwegian ones, I'll check if I have any issues that hasn't been added.

[Edwinner]

I have:

Amiga Format
Amiga Shopper

including the coverdisc and/or coverCD.

[Puni/Void]

When I move back to Norway this year, I can do the following:

Databladet (Norwegian)
DNH Klubben (Norwegian)
Techno (Norwegian) - A few of the older issues contains quite a lot about the Amiga
SAM - Svenska Amiga Magasin (Swedish)

I also have access to quite a lot of the following magazines:
(If there are some issues lacking here and there, I might have
them.)

Amiga Action (Sorry JT! ;))
Amiga Computing
Amiga Format
CD32 Gamer
CU Amiga

Teho: Looking forward to those Amiga Forum issues!

[AlexJ]

The magazines will be available as PDF downloads, created by scanning the complete magazine in page by page, and including every page to preserve the complete publication as it was originally printed. This will therefore include all adverts as well as content.

Also some of the adverts will have a second use on the games section of the site.

[Harrison]

Yes I thought of that too.

Also what do you all think we should do with the game reviews in each magazine? I want to somehow link them into the actual game entries on the site. We could just include a section on each game page where we list the magazines that reviewed the game, and include the issue it was in and the page number, along with the score given. Or we could take it further and also actually have the review pages linked as images in addition to being in the complete magazine PDFs.

What is everyone's thoughts about this? Obviously doing this would increase the amount of work on the site, but when someone scans in a magazine they could add the reviews to the games as they go, so it wouldn't be quite as bad.

[Teho]

This is a nice idea. I think a "reviewed by" section listing the magazine issues and the score would be good, with the magazine name and issue number linking to the PDF download. Or the relevant issue's info page if there is going to be one for each issue.

[AlexJ]

What about a pdf file for each game containing all the reviews of that game? Would involve a bit of work cutting pages out of the main PDF files but would be cool to have all reviews for a particular game available in one go.

[Harrison]

That is quite a good idea too. Not sure which would be the best approach now.

So far we have the following options:

List the magazines with the reviews in and link to their magazine page for downloading of the full mag PDF.
List the magazines and link to each of the review pages from the magazines directly.
List the magazines and host a PDF with a collection of all reviews in one.The problem with the last option is that if new reviews for a game were added later the PDF would then need to be recreated. Whereas if just the pages from each issue were included as links more reviews could be added much more easily at a later date.

[burns flipper]

Have we got anyfurther onthesedecisions yet? Is there a guide available for all the standards i.e. what dpi etc to scan at?

[Harrison]

We haven't really got any further with the magazine section because of all the work needed for the game and demo sections so far. But it will eventually happen.

As for scanning. 150-300dpi is the resolution and the dimensions of each page should be at least 1500 wide. This then gives more than enough detail for cleaning them up before scaling them down for the final PDF.

[burns flipper]

I have some time off these next few weeks and I have my scanner sat next to me. If you can decide what format you want scans in, i.e. jpg, tif, ocr'd pdf or whatever, I can get started.

I'm only doing it once so decide quickly! And are there any I don't need to scan? I have a complete Amiga Power collection, a couple of Amiga Format, and lots of The One (before it went sh!t).

[Harrison]

OCR'd PDFs would be the perfect format if you have the time to do it. Otherwise jpg would be OK.

Amiga Power and The One are the two magazines I personally don't have many copies of, so if you could do those two it would be great. I've got AF, CuA, AUi and AC covered as I have near complete collections of most of those.

[AlexJ]

We already have near complete scans of The One with permission to use. Ditto Amiga Force magazine. Also, with AMR having some 40,000 pages scans, I'd suggest delaying the launch until we have 3 or 4 titles with every issue scanned. Else CA will look poor in comparison.

As a thought for file format, scanning as JPG and then converting to PDF at a later date is my suggestion - this way we still have individual page images stashed away if needed. If someone scans into JPG, I'm quite happy to do the conversion to PDF and OCRing step.

[burns flipper]

What is AMR?

[Graham Humphrey]

Amiga Magazine Rack. (http://amr.abime.net)

[Harrison]

The problem I still have with AMR is the inconsistent and low quality scans they are using. And also the number of missing pages per magazine issue. I've yet to see any of the advert pages. They seem to strip out every page other than contents, previews and reviews.

I personally want to create an archive that contains higher quality scans and with each issue containing every page to future archival purposes and for our own nostalgia.

AMR is still a great resource, don't get me wrong. It is an amazing project that has had a great deal of time and energy spent on it to date and it is a great resource for searching for things.

[burns flipper]

That's a big site. Also looks like they have my entire magazine collection. Ho hum.

On another note, I found the game I knew I'd read about - it was Realms of Darkness (the isometric RPG which leaves trails if you trudge through the snow). The preview in The One is the one I remember reading.

[Harrison]

A lot of the content on AMR has been directly ripped from existing scanned magazine collections. I've have complete scanned collections of certain magazines for some years now and the scans for those are identical (but lower quality) on AMR.

That isn't really an issue from my point of view as such scans were always made with the intention of being shared. The only issue I do have is that they are too low quality to ever be considered a preservation project for the future. Great resource for now though.

[burns flipper]

We already have near complete scans of The One with permission to use. Ditto Amiga Force magazine.Where from?

[burns flipper]

Also...

look what I have!

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/6307/apsubsgb3.th.png (http://img257.imageshack.us/my.php?image=apsubsgb3.png) http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/5751/dscf0023al5.th.jpg (http://img187.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0023al5.jpg) http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/60/dscf0022so4.th.jpg (http://img169.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0022so4.jpg) http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/3255/dscf0017rr8.th.jpg (http://img356.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0017rr8.jpg) http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/9543/dscf0018bx5.th.jpg (http://img169.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0018bx5.jpg) http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/8167/dscf0019ff8.th.jpg (http://img364.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0019ff8.jpg) http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/6606/dscf0020st4.th.jpg (http://img246.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0020st4.jpg) http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/6717/dscf0021kt4.th.jpg (http://img365.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0021kt4.jpg) http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/2889/dscf0016xr8.th.jpg (http://img156.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0016xr8.jpg) http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/1290/dscf0014sg5.th.jpg (http://img144.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0014sg5.jpg) http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/9251/dscf0013ub4.th.jpg (http://img365.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0013ub4.jpg) http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/5694/dscf0012ok6.th.jpg (http://img261.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0012ok6.jpg) http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/3864/dscf0011ce9.th.jpg (http://img440.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0011ce9.jpg) http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/641/dscf0005nc4.th.jpg (http://img153.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0005nc4.jpg) http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/6640/dscf0007gy0.th.jpg (http://img223.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0007gy0.jpg) http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/7056/dscf0008us5.th.jpg (http://img381.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0008us5.jpg) http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/4291/dscf0009ca9.th.jpg (http://img403.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0009ca9.jpg) http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/2506/dscf0010se4.th.jpg (http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0010se4.jpg) http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/4858/dscf0003hc5.th.jpg (http://img187.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscf0003hc5.jpg)

I like how in the letter, which came with the last Amiga Power, it says "But it's not all bad news - we'll be sending you Amiga Format from now on!!"

And look at those Amiga Powers from 1992 that still have the disks sellotaped to the covers!

[Buleste]

My god!!!!!! I can't believe you kept the packaging as well. Thats hoarding.... Hoarding to the MAX!!!!!!!! Sorry lost it a little then. Does AMR have Amiga Actives?

[AlexJ]

We already have near complete scans of The One with permission to use. Ditto Amiga Force magazine.Where from?

http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzuperstore.html

They're also floating round as a torrent somewhere. I got in touch with the guy who scanned them a while back and he said he was OK with us using them.