>So, I have a few old manuals:
>
> >> "PDP-10 Processor Handbook", dated 1970 and describing the KA10;
> >> "PDP-10 Timesharing Handbook", same vintage, describing monitor
> utilities and such;
> >> "DECsystem-10 Assembly Language Programming", dated 1972 (? unsure,
> and the book isn't here with me right now), describing KA10 and
> KI10 and some programming utilities (MACRO, DDT, Loader, etc.)
>
>These are all phonebook-style manuals, printed on newsprint, and are all
>beginning to fall apart - the paper has turned yellow/brown, and some of
>the pages are starting to crumble like dry leaves.
>
>Can anyone suggest any ways these books could be preserved (or at least,
>have their disintegration slowed down)? I'm inclined to try to scan them
>in and OCR them to preserve the information, but I believe that would
>require me to take the pages out of the binding, destroying the books
>immediately. Can anyone suggest any other preservation methods?
Yeah, well, that's the rub. Doug Jones wrote up his efforts to
preserve of PDP-8 paperbacks, and he begins:
Once you have concluded that a paperback is beond repair,
the first step in preserving its contents
is to complete its destruction. Slice off the glued
spine of the paperback so that the pages come
apart as separate sheets. You can cut the sheets
from the spine with an X-acto knife, or you can
find a shop with a paper shear that will cut the spine loose.
Doug then goes into a very detailed step-by-step description of
producing an archival-quality duplicate of the original information.
For further details on Doug's efforts, see
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/book/
--
Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa_at_trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917
Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927
Received on Wed Nov 24 1999 - 12:06:25 GMT