★ HARDWARE ★ SO WHY DO I NEED A SCANNER? (AMSTRAD ACTION) ★ |
| So why do I need a Scanner? (Amstrad Action) |
Scanners work on the principle that when a beam of light is shone on to an object, a piece of paper in this case, the darker parts will absorb the most light and thus reflect back less than the lighter parts. This information is sent back to the computer and transferred into pixels, which are then plotted on your monitor. The only commercially available scanner for the CPC is the Dart Scanner, which clips on to the printer head of any Amstrad DMP printer. Another scanner was invented for the Amstrad, the circuit diagram and information for which was printed in the book Easy Add-on Projects for the Amstrad CPC 464, 664, 6128 and MSX computers. (BP171) (Hmm, nice catchy title - Karen). Published by Bernard Babani. Though in principle it does work, in practice it's extremely difficult to get any recognisable results. In black and white Both scanners only produce two-colour pictures in MODE 2. So, bearing in mind how the scanner actually works, the best results are obviously obtained with black and white images. Images with several colours or two similar colours will give poor results. To get optimum results with the Dart Scanner, photocopy the work first. This not only preserves the picture from the ink (you need to remove the ribbon to avoid this), but also turns your image into a straight black and white one. Next, get hold of some sticky-back plastic and tape the image to the back of a cereal packet, making sure you get the paper taught. (Next week well be showing you how to create a new joystick out of loo paper rolls and an egg carton - Valerie Singleton) This avoids the rippling effect you get when the printer head moves over the printer. Now feed your cardboard and paper into the printer. You may have to adjust height of the printer head using the switch on the left hand side, though once it's loaded, you need to push it back down to bring the scanner light nearer the paper. All that's left to do now is to draw the curtains, turn off the lights, let your neighbours know what you're doing so they don't get the wrong idea, and hit the scan button. Darkness is not essential, but it does improve the quality slightly. Save it! Once you've scanned your image you can save it out, using the scanning software provided, as a standard 17K screen file, which can then be loaded using the following BASIC line: MODE 2:LOAD"SCREEN.BIN" ,&C000:CALL &BB18These screen files are compatible with all art packages, but the scanner won't save out an OCP ‘PAL' palette file. There is a way round this, though -just append the following patch to the file DARTSCAN.BAS.710 SAVE "!"+fl$+".scr",b,&4000,&4000Desktop publishing |
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