Marantz 2500 Service Manual very high-res pdf

TJacques

Active Member
I have very detailed scans of a near-perfect Service Manual (each page is between about 20MB to 135MB), and have been considering putting them together into a VERY large pdf. To give you an idea of the quality, the individual orange printing dots in the circuit board diagrams are very well resolved. I will no doubt reduce the file sizes somewhat before collating them, hopefully without much, if any, reduction in quality.

Sample:

Zoom of sample page.png

There are two questions I have before I do this:

1) does anyone know of a GOOD image to PDF OCR program? I want to ensure that the text is searchable and either invisible or overwritten in the final pdf. That way, searching for a part will become easy. I’ve tried all the so-called best-of-the-bunch, like ABBY, etc., but none seem capable of reading text reliably. Many can’t insert an invisible text layer, etc.. Many bork merely reading the files before I attempt to process them. Does anyone know of a decent OCR product for Mac?

2) does anyone WANT such a pdf? I have found the ones in the AK archive useful, but limited and far too low resolution for things like voltages that were listed on the circuit diagrams. To be able to print a high-quality colour laser print at any time seems like something owners of 2500s might want.

2a) should I fold known error corrections into the pdf before uploading it to the archive?

Thanks.

Trevor.
 
Yes I would want this pdf. I use Adobe Acrobat XI Pro to collate jpgs to pdf and once created then use the 'tools' menu to complete OCR tasks. I'm sure there are many other programs and newer ones too, but I have had good luck with Acrobat XI. Good luck with your project!
 
I cant help with the program but I can say thank you for all the work you're putting into this. This will be a huge help to many for years to come!
 
Given that there's some enthusiasm, I'll use this thread to hold the list of people who'd like a copy. Please add your "Me. Me. Me." in this thread. Thanks.

Please also note that, after trying Acrobat DC, I can tell you that it does not work very well, nor consistently for diagram pages. This will mean I'll have LOTS of hand editing to do, so it may take some time before I get back to you all. With any luck, I'll find more and more ways around the limitations as I proceed.
 
Given that there's some enthusiasm, I'll use this thread to hold the list of people who'd like a copy. Please add your "Me. Me. Me." in this thread. Thanks.

Please also note that, after trying Acrobat DC, I can tell you that it does not work very well, nor consistently for diagram pages. This will mean I'll have LOTS of hand editing to do, so it may take some time before I get back to you all. With any luck, I'll find more and more ways around the limitations as I proceed.
For us don't worry about being searchable... That can be a daunting task.
 
I would love a hi res blown up copy of the schematic!

Bob
Ah. That I have already as a TIFF. I joined several scans together using the Panorama tool in one of my grapgics tools. IIRC, it’s about 120MB. I MIGHT be able to reduce the file size size without losing too much detail, but I would still expect it ti be about 10-15MB.
 
I might help... I can make a non searchable PDF. I can give you acces to one carpet on my google drive if you want, then you can upload whatever amount you want.
 
For us don't worry about being searchable... That can be a daunting task.
The reason I had wanted it to be searchable was because I have so often had the need for that; as in, “Just where the %^!.\@*! IS that component shown in the manual?”

And clearly, tech is not yet fully up to that task, I might oroduce a hybrid, where the text-only pages are searchable, because OCR seems to be good enough for that.

I forgot to mention that I have spreadsheets of parts numbers for cap replacement orders from Mouser. Now that I have completed my orders, it would seem to be a waste to delete the lists, which are one per board (nit alk, as I have yet to touch the radio side if the 2500). The lists took at least two full days apiece to create, if I am honest. They are the distillation of an approach to components, part size/lead spacing, and availability in Mouser’s catalogue. Oh, and the service manual’s errors and omissions, as well as my having a board design for P400 that is similar to but rather different from the one documented in the manual.

Takers?
 
I might help... I can make a non searchable PDF. I can give you acces to one carpet on my google drive if you want, then you can upload whatever amount you want.
Thanks for the offer, but the non-searchable thingy I can do almost with my eyes closed. :) Being a computer techie also means I have oodles of disk space for sandboxing. Currently, about a third of if the pages are ~450MB apiece. :)

I suspect that my approach will be to optimize the visuals in each image (contrast, show-through reduction, etc.), then clean up to a standard clean header, remove punch hole dross, etc., before processing each simple page with OCR. After that, it’s just a case of dragging the pages into the final document.
 
I was processing page 17, thinking I was going mad. Could any of you with a little spare time, try starting at J403 and follow the traces on the board and see what happens when you try to match that tracing with the paths shown in the circuit diagram at the top of the page? Only a couple of components from J403 should show you why I think that there are a lot of problems, here. I have a board that is not the one in the manual, so I can't do that comparison. :-/

Thanks.
 
Back
Top Bottom