Apple Schematics

I think it would be best to convert (Save As) the PDF schematic pages as JPG files, then stitch the JPGs.  Adobe Acrobat has this capability.  Some 3rd party websites claim to do JPG conversions for free but be cautious.

I have the Apple II Rev 0 schematic pages scanned at high resolution to stitch together with Corel's PaintShop Pro but haven't done it yet.

JPEG is a bad choice for formats for that kind of work because it is compressed lossy.  PNG would be a better choice.  You can resize and manipulate it and save and not lose any quality.

In post #1, stargeezer wrote:

"I thought about doing this for the II+ and IIe."

Uncle Bernie comments:

The original "Apple II Reference Manual" came with a folded complete schematic, which you could bring to a special copy shop (those who can print larger sheets) to make a copy without the folds.

But for the II+ and IIe I've never seen complete schematics on one large sheet.

The IIe schematics were drawn with CAD software, so they are absolutely terrible, and not a work of art anymore. You might think that ~40 years later there would be CAD software allowing to draw nice schematics, but actually it got worse, especially with the full custom IC design suite from Cadence. There is absolutely no way to get any beautiful schematics out. So the semiconductor company I worked for kept a team of "artists" who would redraw our schematics by hand, using some typesetting software (Pagemaker ??? - I never asked) and the outcome of that tedious procedure (we had to hand check the result and find the errors, rinse and repeat) then ended up as nice, beautiful schematics in the datasheets and application notes.

Up to this day there is NO automated software tool I know of which would render the crappy and atrocious CAD schematics coming out of the various PCB tools or IC design suites into something that pleases the eye. There used to be one (I think non-commercial, but I'm not sure) CAD tool for drawing schematics which internally was based on Postscript and that would produce nicer schematics than others, but still not great ones.

So, sorry I can't help you. But I have outlined where "nice" schematics come from. It's not the stork who brings them. You have to painstakingly typeset them by hand. That is exactly how the nice schematics in Armin's "Apple 1 User Manual" replicas were made. Hours and hours of working with some typesetting CAD tool.

Oh, and as a comment on the various suggestions above to stitch together scans - if you use a high enough resolution then you end up with a memory hog which is useless to navigate within. I expect that any schematic I open on a modern computer with gigabytes of RAM and GHz clocked CPUs can be zoomed in and out and moved about within fractions of a second. Not so ! If you move a scroll bar it moves - tick - tick - tick at snail-like speeds which are absolutely inacceptable. And people still call that "technical progress".

- Uncle Bernie

UncleBernie,

Do you have any experience with Japanese CAD software such as Zuken? The service manuals for Sony, Panasonic, JVC, etc. products made in the 1980s and 1990s have really pretty schematics and they look computer-generated, not hand drawn. Some of the silkscreen art on the circuit boards themselves is also really nicely done. So I suspect that CAD software in Japan has more attention to aesthetics.

Of course I don't know if this level of aesthetic quality still exists, because newer equipment either doesn't have service manuals, or they haven't been leaked so I can see them.

In post #5, robespierre wrote:

"Do you have any experience with Japanese CAD software such as Zuken? The service manuals for Sony, Panasonic, JVC, etc. products made in the 1980s and 1990s have really pretty schematics ... "

Uncle Bernie answers:

Oh, thanks for the insight ! I always marveled at the nice schematics in these Japanese service manuals. Zuken still exists (www.zuken.com), but it's too early in the morning for me to investigate further.

About the utmost importance of "aesthetic quality" in schematics, IMHO they reflect, as any blueprint in any field of engineering does, the attitude of the designer(s) towards their work. Aesthetically pleasing schematics which are well thought out and organized convey the message that this is a work of love, made very well, and to high standards. On the other hand, sh*tty schematics full of chaotic stuff wired by name convey the attitude that the designer(s) did not care  - or were in a hurry because some moronic manager pointed a gun to their head (figuratively), but regardless which was the reason for these sh*tty schematics, the design, in all likelyhood, also is cr@ppy and bug ridden. All this may sound ridiculous to most readers, but there is a deeper, not very well understood  (in the strict scientific sense) effect of beauty ("aesthetic quality") on the human psyche and this then extends to the quality of the work  done by that human. Some cultures, like the Japanese, embrace refined "aesthetic quality" in everything they do, even their 'fast food' is very nicely wrapped in an intricate way that requires great skill. Russian engineering is the opposite: the crudest and ugliest way to accomplish the task at hand is chosen. Maybe it's permanent cultural damage which has been caused by the Bolshewist purges and the Soviet era mindset in general ("They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work"). Then you have "cultures" of low IQ people who never produced any item possessing any "aesthetic quality" at all. Or decayed cultures who once were leading in mathematics and sciences and created beautiful objects of art, more than one millennium ago, but now, after 50 generations of inbreeding (cousin marriage) they are no capable to do that anymore. (Sad).

Now, if you look at the works of the various peoples of the world, in the diverse nations, and their standard of living, how they dress up, how  their dwellings and their cities look, and how their streets look, through that lens, you will find some interesting correlations. And the USA does not look good through that lens, although not as bad as, say, some South American  or Middle American countries, or most of the Carribean hellholes.

- Uncle Bernie

You can make some very nice digital schematics with a drawing program like Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, Corel Draw or similar.  The result is not useful for actual CAD PCB board development, but I don't think that that is the object.  A small monochrome example can be seen on my Superproto page:  http://willegal.net/superproto/SuperProto.htm

It would be simple to add color if that was deemed desirable.  For the complete Apple II, this would be a fairly big project, but the result could be quite nice and easily scalable to different sizes.

Mike Willegal 

softwarejanitor wrote:

JPEG is a bad choice for formats for that kind of work because it is compressed lossy.  PNG would be a better choice.  You can resize and manipulate it and save and not lose any quality.

Provided JPG is set to low compression, low loss, it works exceedingly well.  PNG is also slightly better.