Amiga Action Issues 70 and 77

[Titler]

As is being discussed here, between us we may be able to locate all of the missing coverdiscs. Prowler kindly copied Disc 3 for Issue 70 from my original 2 years ago, and I've added it back into the Zone as well as uploading it here;

http://www..com/?105n9bzgd4lqavc

I can also scan the entire magazines in over the coming week, but they are considerably battered. Please can you confirm if the below quality is acceptable before I get stuck in?

ALSO I SWEAR ON THE LIFE OF MY LOVED ONES I ONLY EVER BOUGHT 2 ISSUES! I was weak, Amiga Power was no more, and I hoped the Scramble game would be good... forgive me!

Anyway, note the cover damage, and the dog eared corners. If this isn't a problem, I'll scan the rest of the magazines soon...

Issue 70:

Spine Text: "Now I sew ze mailsacks, no?"

Page 5 as an example of quality:

http://postimage.org/image/go9nbw0in/


If Prowler still has the Daemon coverdisc I sent him to clone, I'll try and get a scan from the original... I seem to have lost, or re-used the other two myself, I'm sorry.

Issue 77:

Please note, Amiga Magazine Rack has the wrong cover listed for this issue. And that AA can't apparently spell December... wot a quality mag!

Spine Text: "We've turned over a new leaf. Up with the Amiga!"

Cover Disc No.1: ITS Cricket

http://postimage.org/image/f96ndvxyh/

Front Cover, very battered:

http://postimage.org/image/6v9hjns7l/

Rear Cover, also battered. Brown blob top right isn't part of the original artwork, possibly a fossilized chocolate chip...

http://postimage.org/image/4f7o5ta4x/



So again, if this quality of original document is acceptable, I'll get on with scanning the entire magazines. Please feel free to state what DPI and document size you'd prefer, as I tried to scale down to close to what you use at AMR, but I can also go much higher!

[lilalurl]

There is an issue with the links for the pictures, as they don't show in the post (at least for me and probably other people).
When put in the address bar, the link for the 1st is redirected to:
http://postimage.org/image/go9nbw0in/
which actually display the picture.

[Codetapper]

I couldn't see the original pictures either, thought it was my older browser. Anyway, those scans look fine to me. The only thing I'd say is to slice the little bit of the previous page off but other than that they're fine.

I have a script which resizes the images if you prefer to upload larger higher resolution images but the example one is perfectly readable to me so they're great thanks!

[Titler]

*nods* I'll be including them as an entire zip file of the complete magazines when I'm done, so I'll leave them at full size for you to resize yourself... an evening of scanning ahoy then!

[prowler]

Originally Posted by lilalurl

There is an issue with the links for the pictures, as they don't show in the post (at least for me and probably other people).
When put in the address bar, the link for the 1st is redirected to:
http://postimage.org/image/go9nbw0in/
which actually display the picture.

Originally Posted by Codetapper

I couldn't see the original pictures either, thought it was my older browser.

Thanks, guys! I've replaced the broken image links in the first post with links to view the images in a new window.

[Titler]

Sorry, sorry; they showed for me in preview, I guess the suggested forum codes weren't quite correct... I'm working (slowly) on completing the magazines for you now!

[Titler]

Here's the first parts of Issue 77, pages 1 to 25. The files will be huge as I've left them full size for your own conversion. I've tried to sort out the tatty corners as best I can, and I've slightly cropped the edges to create a square alignment. The horizontal alignment is a little off in one or two places, partly due to age of the paper, partly due to being unable to get it exactly into the scanner, but hopefully it's acceptable.

Please let me know if you'd like me to take a second pass at any particular page, and at the current rate of scanner placing, GIMP scanning and tweaking, I can get about 10 pages an hour done. Which is 1 every 10 minutes, which doesn't sound quite as bad :P

Part 1:
http://www..com/?44t2l15fsq9q1si

Part 2:
http://www..com/?fv0w8dec99v8bif

[Titler]

I got distracted over the weekend, but I've completed the last of Amiga Action 77 now. Tomorrow I'll post the surviving cover disc off to Prowler to see if the right data is still on there (no promises) and as always, let me know if any pages need re-scanning.

Part 3:

http://www..com/?jx7cq3221n5zvzg

Part 4:

http://www..com/?k09vsl3he8223sx

Part 5:

http://www..com/?cpcwi00szdzimec

I've started work on Amiga Action 70 now. The corners are much, much tattier still, but I hope I can get all the contents to a high quality. If only I could go back in time and edit the text to a higher quality in turn... I remember Page 43 in particular, even in 1995 when I first saw it and it was still easy to find cavemen wandering around clubbing words randomly onto the page, as one of the dumbest things I'd seen in game journalism.

[Titler]

Amiga Action 70 complete;

Part 1

http://www..com/?cii0dhe1k5da1ja

Part 2

http://www..com/?kmwmwn4eb0x8r9c

Part 3

http://www..com/?wj8yi2z44yhroiv

Part 4

http://www..com/?ifvaln4cwj2m53m

Part 5;

http://www..com/?3ibob6cc84h78bv

[Codetapper]

Amiga Action issue 77 is now online thanks to your scans!

This has highlighted an error though. There's a disk scan from the Christmas 1995 issue, which clearly does not match the December 1995 issue. Another site suggests AA had a Comic Relief Xmas special with 4 disks and 'The Blues Brothers' as one of the games, but I need more confirmation. Do you know anything about this issue? It seems 78 is the January issue, so it's not numbered nicely

It would actually save me a tonne of work downloading and reuploading the scans if you could upload them directly as JPGs to the HOL FTP site rather than in archives. I am too tired to do issue 70 now as it takes a long time to leech, resize and reupload them!

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

Another site suggests AA had a Comic Relief Xmas special with 4 disks and 'The Blues Brothers' as one of the games, but I need more confirmation.

Just going through this issue (nice work chaps, scanning and getting this up, by the way) and page 38 is the back issues page. A read of this reveals that issue 69 (April 1995) has four coverdisks and one of them is indeed The Blues Brothers. So the other site suggesting it was a Christmas special seems to be inaccurate.

[Codetapper]

Can anybody shed light on the fact the December 1995 issue has a cover that doesn't match the Christmas 1995 disks? Maybe there is another special we are missing. Any help greatly appreciated!

[Arnie]

Those disks are from the Jan 96 issue

[Titler]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

Amiga Action issue 77 is now online thanks to your scans!

...

It would actually save me a tonne of work downloading and reuploading the scans if you could upload them directly as JPGs to the HOL FTP site rather than in archives. I am too tired to do issue 70 now as it takes a long time to leech, resize and reupload them!

Working on that now, I've not had a FTP program in years, he he; Filezilla looks free, I'll snaffle that!

It will take a while to process though, so bear with me...

[Titler]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

Can anybody shed light on the fact the December 1995 issue has a cover that doesn't match the Christmas 1995 disks? Maybe there is another special we are missing. Any help greatly appreciated!

I can't I'm afraid, as I only ever bought the two magazines on a whim, so I didn't physically see what followed this one... However what I have scanned is clearly the "Decembser 1995" issue of this quality magazine, if it's December you're after, you should have said!

I've posted the one disc I could find off to Prowler, again I'm not sure if ITS Cricket is still on there as it was in another game's box so could have been used as a data disc. Fingers crossed though!

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Titler

I've posted the one disc I could find off to Prowler, again I'm not sure if ITS Cricket is still on there as it was in another game's box so could have been used as a data disc. Fingers crossed though!

I received the disk this morning, thanks.

We'll know what it contains tomorrow when I introduce it to my Catweasel.

[prowler]

It's bad news, I'm afraid.

The disk's volume name is Frontier Data Disc. Does that ring any bells?

I've made an .ADF image of it. It has 17 bad sectors, but I've recovered one of them.

I've not tried it in emulation yet; I've barely had time to dump the four disks you sent me. So just in case it already contains what you need, I'm uploading a work-in-progress disk image to The Zone for you to try.

[Titler]

He he, no need to worry about it then... I managed to make a working Frontier data disc yonks back, so I need nothing from it. It's just a shame for the community it wasn't the AA disc itself. Onwards to cross checking Xenon 2 for new versions then, good sir!

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Titler

He he, no need to worry about it then... I managed to make a working Frontier data disc yonks back, so I need nothing from it.

Thanks for your quick response.

It's just as well; I can't fix those bad sectors whatever I have tried. They're all either very badly corrupted or unreadable. Most unreadable sectors are immediately preceded by a badly corrupted one, and they're regularly spaced over the last nine tracks on one surface of the disk.

I suspect physical damage, but the recording surface looks spotless.

Originally Posted by Titler

It's just a shame for the community it wasn't the AA disc itself.

Well, it might turn up yet. Let's hope so! Someone must have it. Maybe this thread will flush it out eventually with any luck.

[ElectroBlaster]

This might sound a little crazy but when I have basically run out of options at this point I crack open a bottle of tape cleaner fluid and some q-tips (those cotten ear bud things) and literally clean the magnetic coating! It takes a little time as you need to rotate the disk, clean the visible coating, rotate a bit and repeat until you have done the entire surface and then flip the disk over and repeat for the second side. Ensure it is dry by using fresh q-tips again to mop up/dry if needed.

I had an ancient atari st disk for an obscure bit of hardware called "Microdeal Microtime Clock Cartridge" and it appeared to totally rotten and dead. It also shed magnetic brown stuff over my disk drive heads it was that bad

I had nothing too loose so I went for it and somehow after that cleaning I was able to save the entire disk and it still reads fine lol.

I cannot say for sure if it will work in this case but I would defo give it a bash.