(This on-line book was originally created to be printed. We converted the files from the originals to the needed gif and text files to make the HTML pages you see.)
The original was produced in a desktop color pre-press environment. When we started on this project in 1990, some of the techniques we use weren't defined yet. What appear to be color photographs are really 24 bit color still digital images that have been captured using a Sony DCX-537 camera with a CA-325A adapter make produce an NTSC S-video signal. (Early images in the project were taken with a less resolute Sony DCX-425) The still image was captured using a Color Snap 32 capture board from Computer Friends.
The images were manipulated, color corrected, cropped and re-sampled to a greater depth using Adobe Photoshop (versions 1.0.1 to 2.5.1). The text was written and edited using WordPerfect for the Macintosh (versions 1.02 to 3.0.1). The table were created in Table Editor a program bundled with Aldus Pagemaker. We are probably one of the last color desktop users to have never experimented with Quark Express, there just hasn't been time to try to learn a new layout program.
In the beginning we used original Mac II with 020 running at 16 megacycles. We moved up to X models (CX & IIX) then Radius Rockets, then a Quadra 800 with 72 megs of RAM for one of us and a CI with 32 megs of RAM for the other. We have a Lino L330 image setter with RIP 30 to put out our film separations directly from electronic files that have been stored on 18 Gigabytes of hard disks. We use large capacity 1.2 or 2.4 Gig Fujitsu drives exclusively.
In the early days of the project we tried all sorts of storage solutions. SyQuest cartridges were found to be too slow, too small, and too volatile to trust for daily use or as an archive medium. We tried magneto optical drives, writable/erasable CD disks that are supposed to be permanent for 20 years. We found both the Maxoptix Tahiti I and the Ricoh E model were ultimately incapable of even reading their own low level formatting, much less our files with in a couple of months. Repairs to the Tahiti never made it work, or restored our confidence in the drive. We have had a disk drive failure from about every manufacturer but Fujitsu. We have failed drives from MiniScribe, Quantum, Seagate, Maxtor, and Rodime and these are just the makers that we can easily recall. We settled on Fujitsu because they had the longest MTBF (mean time between failure), were the first to guarantee the mechanism for at least 5 years and actually are a drive manufacturer (not a driver writer, re-packager/reseller). The Fujitsu hardware with consistant backups delivered the project.
The project was largely the work of two people, Frank and Susan Savage. Frank wrote all the reviews, created the tables and "took" the digital images. Ms. Savage formatted the text, corrected the layout of the tables, made all the corrections to the images and performed the page layout. In the last month, there was assistance from Matt Ornbaun in image capture, George Rangas in the color output and Clay Akey to make sure the part numbers and pricing were reasonably accurate.
