Amstrad Action

[ChaRleyTroniC]

Over on CPC Zone there's a thread about the disappearance of CPC Oxygen's Amstrad Action scans.

Is there any chance the scans could be uploaded to the wiki? I know it'd be a pretty mammoth hosting job, but it would be really cool to link to (say) an Amstrad Action review of a game from the wiki page about that game.

There's also a whole load of 'CPC history' covered in the pages of AA which would be worth writing about.

[CPCLER]

Yup!

I think its a good idea!!

/CPCLER

[Prodatron]

Yeah, would be cool! 
As far as I understood Kangaroo has no problems to host gigabytes of stuff here for this Wiki!
I just wonder, if there is a more comfortable way to upload them by not using the MediaWikis upload feature.

[Octoate]

Well, it shouldn't be a problem to upload it to Kanga's FTP server which already hosts some big CPC related files, too.

[ChaRleyTroniC]

I just wonder, if there is a more comfortable way to upload them by not using the MediaWikis upload feature.

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2006-June/013196.html

How are your mad PHP sk1llz, Gryzor? 

[transformer]

Over on CPC Zone there's a thread about the disappearance of CPC Oxygen's Amstrad Action scans.
Is there any chance the scans could be uploaded to the wiki?

I've sent past week to zeropolis79 (CPC Zone) DVD copies for all I have about AA and CPC Oxygen, including the full and "improved" scans, so he can compare with their AA files and data, get the best files or formats, and decide better about how proceed, upload, copy, or sending elsewhere.

CPCregards
transformer

[Gryzor]

Well, it'd be uploaded through FTP, not the Mediawiki. I'll have to check with Kangaroo, though, about the size; what is the total size?

Cheers
Gryzor

[kangaroo]

So as you have "unlimited" Space on the machine for the wiki-projekt, there is no problem at all. I also increased the max upload filesize to 20 MB, so uploading of larger files shall be possible now (i've tested it with an MP3 :-)

I am thinking about to host the Wiki on a dedicated virtual Server (VMWare ESX-Basis), to be a bit more flexible with backups and stuff, so there will be an amount of 80 to 160 GBs then. But i have to wait until Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is out (shall come on End of Feb. 2007) to give the Wiki a more professional and long time supported OS in the background with PHP5, MySQL5 etc. (as you requested earlier to have more features on the wiki) i Think that will be much better than an non-supported OS like Fedora Core or others. Maybe also CentOS is an alternative OS for that projekt - we'll see.

So just add enough filetypes like .128, .sng, .bin, .dsk, to get the ability to upload stuff to the articles, to get them perfect.. I will love to have the possibility to download a demo as DSK-File directly from the wiki instead of the need of an external link or googeling around to find things.

[kangaroo]

oh .. another way to make things better is to have an extra FTP-Server (anonymous FTP) for the Wiki only on the same machine and under ftp.cpcwiki.com for example. Maybe that is also a solution for transfering huge files on the server? Only Problem then wil be bandwith, as our own ftp.cmo.de-Server need hundrends of GigaBytes each month only with CPC-Stuff, cause people always think about getting the whole archive twice :-(

[Gryzor]

The anon-ftp would be great indeed for lots of reasons! I think I can enable anon-ftp myself through the control panel.
A new server would also be god-sent indeed, because of the up-to-date software available for newer PHP versions...

However, I understand the bandwidth issue. Is there a way to limit leeching?

Cheers
Gryzor

[kangaroo]

We can limit it only on a per server base. So if we switch to an extra server away from a shared hosting, we can limit it to 64 kbit/s if you want to  But i think a limitation on 4 MBit/s for downloads will be OK and usefull. As we get a new STM1-Line here, the risk of getting high bandwith downloads from universities is very high and the costs are growing with every MBit/s they use. So the problem is surely not the "normal" download from normal users, but the "backup-downloads" from people or automated synchronisations with other mostly private ftp-servers around.

As soon as our new Server-Farm is online, i will have an solution for you and the wiki.

[zeropolis79]

If anyone is intrested, I have a complete set of PDF files of Amstrad Action..

[AMSDOS]

If anyone is intrested, I have a complete set of PDF files of Amstrad Action..

Umm, I don't know how to say this, though all 117 issues of AA are in the Downloads Section (4th menu along at the top of this forum), in the Magazines section, though to access it you need to sign-in.

[Gryzor]

True, but still good to know of any alternatives

[Border_7]

While we're on the subject of downloads, magazines and PDF's...


I'd like to see the British CwtA mags available.... one day.... some day...

[Gryzor]

Long overdue. Thanks for the reminder (again), just started uploading Will take the day, probably, on my 1mb/s up line..

[Nich]

I'd like to see the British CwtA mags available.... one day.... some day...

The Zzap Zzuperstore has a DVD containing all the British CwtA scans on sale for £8.99 including P&P - scroll down to the bottom of the page to find it.

I know that Mort! (the scanner) has spent a lot of time scanning these and other magazines, so I strongly doubt that he would encourage any free distribution of these scans.

[Bryce]

There's already PDFs of CwtA going around the internet since years. I have all of 1985 and 86, that I downloaded years ago.

Edit: Just checked them, they are actually still jpgs, not PDF. According to the files, they were created in 1996.

Bryce.

[AMSDOS]

It would be great if there was something like that for the Your Computer Magazines, it's a bit of a pity that some of the Type-in Scans from the Magazines on World of Spectrum are hard to read. 

[Gryzor]

All issues finished uploading; I will import them to the Downloads section within the morning

[Border_7]

Woohoo! cheers!

oh wow - they are huge files!


Personally, I'd prefer these as PDF files... and as a test, I downloaded 2 RAR's and then PDF'd the images. Result is a smaller file. i.e


CwtA Jan 85: RAR = 30mb | PDF = 16mb
CwtA Oct 86: RAR = 214mb | PDF = 25mb


I'm happy to gradually upload the PDF's I've created... to either replace or complement the RAR files.... just an idea.[size=78%] [/size]

[Gryzor]

@Border_7: yeah, unfortunately I couldn't find PDFs for CwtA as with the others. But still, better than nothing I'd guess...


As for PDFs: your files are smaller because the images are compressed. It would be the same as if opening each file and recompressing it - lose some weight, but also quality. But thanks for the offer

[AMSDOS]

I picked up a simple JPEG2PDF converter just the other week on Sourceforge, of course the compromise was it's command-line driven, but the program is so small, you could stick it will all the JPEG files, bunch them up and direct them to a PDF file, I don't think there was any compression involved.

[Gryzor]

JPEG cannot be compressed. PDF encapsulates pictures in one of several formats (jpg and TIFF being the most commonly ones used, I think). But it either incorporates the file as it is, or recompresses it to get smaller sizes.


The only way to drive a jpg size down is to reencode it with a lossy format. Therefore, quality goes down.


If I'm talking out of my arse, please feel free to correct me

[Border_7]

ooookkkkkkaaaaayyyyyy....


I'll produce PDF's for my own enjoyment then