Collectors Guide for Vintage Intel Microchips... It's Done!

[gmphillips3]

It's taken almost 5 years but the collectors guide for vintage Intel microchips is finally complete.

I started converting the hundreds of separate hyperlinked docs in the guide to pdfs around 1:00PM. It took 5 hours for Acrobat to convert the docs to pdfs.

Converting the guide from word to pdf has been an ordeal. The guide consists of hundreds of separate word docs and indexes with thousands of hyperlinks between the different docs and indexes.

I used a software called "Wordpipe" to convert the file names in the hyperlinks from .doc to .pdf. Wordpipe is a find/replace utility that can
do find/replace commands on an entire folders of word docs.

Once I convert the hyperlinks from .doc to .pdf I then convert the word docs to pdfs. I found out last week that's there's no way to mass convert a folder of word docs into separate pdfs so I was looking at having to manually convert the hundreds of docs to pdfs one at a time. Fortunately, someone told be a way to do about 15 at a time by selecting multiple docs but you can't do more than about 15 before you get a "max files open" error in Acrobat. If anyone knows a better way than opening 10 docs at a time in Acrobat please tell me!

I don't have an exact page count. The guide is broken up into 357 cross linked pdfs. There's a separate pdf for each base number (8080, 8080A, 8080B) which typically contains a page or more of specifications and historical info, plus 1 to 20+ pages of photos, part numbers, package descriptions and values in "good" and "like new condition". If I had to guess I would say there's probably an average of 5 pages per pdf so that would make the guide approx. 1800 pages??? I'll eventually get around to getting an exact page count.

The completed guide in pdf format weighs in at 37.7MB

The guide + all the supporting documentation (photos, scans of data sheets, etc) weighs in at 495MB in 5,619 files in 113 separate folders.

I'm going to take a break for a few weeks before I start burning preview
copies and doing one last proof read but it's looking good for a March release.

[ahia123]

I'm really looking forward to see this guide

ahia123

[gmanbc]

I too look forward to getting it as well. I am going to print it in color when I get it just so I will have the first printed copy That should burn up a day or two...

Lee
gmanbc

[xsecret]

I can't wait to read it

[metalmaker]

Can hardly wait to see this. Sounds like a great resource for the hobby. A lot of info all in one place and cross linked. Great idea and a huge project. Hope you do well with this. Count me in for a copy.

Metalmaker

[wepwawet]

One more suspicious collector here!
Sounds like there's someone doing a VERY good job.
It will be a hard one to find a way to say "Thank you"

[CPUShack]

Sounds great to me.

[Desideriu ( Did2a )]

Bravo !!!

[chipcharts]

considering the effort it took to do my charts-- your effort is staggering-- I am impressed-- very much so *grin*

[vksnr]

Congrats on getting all of that work accomplished. I can think of one good way to say thanks - I'll pony up some cash and buy a copy, then recommend it to evryone I know.

VKsnr

[gmphillips3]

See them at

http://home.sc.rr.com/pphillips12/chips/

I will be burning preview CDs this weekend and sending them out
to a handful of collectors within the next few weeks.

[gmphillips3]

<img src=http://home.sc.rr.com/pphillips12/chips/CDScan.jpg></img>

[gmphillips3]

try this again...

<img src="http://home.sc.rr.com/pphillips12/chips/CDScan.jpg"></img>

[gmphillips3]

Maybe this will work...

[chipcollector]

Haha that's excellent!
try [IMG] [/IMG] instead of <img src=> because the src is used on ebay ( I thought it would work here too )
How much would you be marketing those cd's for? It will be a big hit for collectors around the world