Crowdfunding £450 to scan 42 Dreamcast magazines ('Dreamzone' and 'Dreamcast Arena')

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lozz
core
Posts: 123

Crowdfunding £450 to scan 42 Dreamcast magazines ('Dreamzone' and 'Dreamcast Arena')

Post#1 » Sun Feb 26, 2023 1:38 pm

Hello all!

Some of you may be aware that I have been on a bit of a mission to document and preserve Dreamcast magazines (I.E. have them scanned and shared publicly). Well, I now have a full run of 'Dreamzone' and a near-full run of 'Dreamcast Arena' in my possession, and I am turning to the community in the hopes that we can crowdfund the £450 needed to get these things professionally scanned. I have happily paid for the mags themselves (which will be destroyed to allow for full page scanning) but am sadly not loaded enough to cover the scanning costs too.

Full details (which should answer the most common questions) and the opportunity to donate are available on my GoFundMe page: https://gofund.me/58328960

I appreciate this won't be everyone's cup of tea, and many won't have money to spare on frivolities like this, but if you are able then any and all donations would be most welcome.

I'd also be eternally grateful if the link can be shared around to any folks who may be interested.

Cheers,

Lozz
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bingobongo
minority
Posts: 65

Re: Crowdfunding £450 to scan 42 Dreamcast magazines ('Dreamzone' and 'Dreamcast Arena')

Post#2 » Mon Feb 27, 2023 8:44 am

I like the idea, but are scanners that expensive nowadays?

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lozz
core
Posts: 123

Re: Crowdfunding £450 to scan 42 Dreamcast magazines ('Dreamzone' and 'Dreamcast Arena')

Post#3 » Mon Feb 27, 2023 4:52 pm

Hey bingobongo.

Thanks for showing an interest. The money raised is to pay a a professional scanning company to carry out the work (I have a quote in hand) rather than to purchase equipment. Theoretically an A3 flatbed scanner could be bought for less, but the process of scanning 5,000+ pages that way from home would be painstakingly slow. Furthermore, I doubt that I have the knowledge and skills required to do a good job. As mentioned on the GoFundMe page, there are a small number of hobbyists who carry out scanning projects like this on a voluntary basis, but I haven't managed to secure any takers as of yet, which isn't too surprising to me as the scale of the task here is quite big, and these folks are often already occupied by ongoing projects.

I appreciate the price tag may seem steep, but if it can be spread out over a couple of dozen people (myself included), then we should be able to see these magazines preserved and shared publicly for all to enjoy in a relatively speedy timeframe. I don't have a great deal of experience with things like this, so benchmarking isn't easy, but the quote I have works out at a little over £10 per magazine issue, which seems reasonable (to me at least) when considered that way.

That said, I totally understand that most people won't have money to spare on frivolities like this. Times are hard and other things take priority.

Please do let me know if you have any other thoughts. I'm more than happy to take advice into consideration here.

Cheers,

Lozz

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Anthony817
Shark Patrol
Posts: 4009

Re: Crowdfunding £450 to scan 42 Dreamcast magazines ('Dreamzone' and 'Dreamcast Arena')

Post#4 » Mon Feb 27, 2023 5:52 pm

I used to frequent Out of Print Archive and another site that was dedicated to preserving Dreamcsat and other classic gaming magazines.

I used a lot of content from various DC magazine Half-Life DC articles to make a package of all related scanned HLDC media I could find.

https://mega.nz/file/6IUXnbrT#ffpquch6u ... 5KQwPTjbes

That link's in .pdf format, though if you want to see where somebody uploaded all those pages I compiled into .jpeg format you can look here.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... OQkw43Hj2K

I do hope you achieve your goals with this project. Might be worthwhile posting about this over at Dreamcast subreddit as it is very active there too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamcast/
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Loloretro
chill
Posts: 300

Re: Crowdfunding £450 to scan 42 Dreamcast magazines ('Dreamzone' and 'Dreamcast Arena')

Post#5 » Tue Feb 28, 2023 5:57 pm

Some Dreamzone magazines can be found in PDF on this french website:

https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/a ... 241&page=1

A lot of them are missing

From this website, there is a search engine that allows you to access all the magazines listed above:

http://retromagazinesearch.uliege.be/v2 ... ed=140&a=1

I must be missing 5 Dreamzone magazines to get them all. I am not equipped to scan them properly.

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lozz
core
Posts: 123

Re: Crowdfunding £450 to scan 42 Dreamcast magazines ('Dreamzone' and 'Dreamcast Arena')

Post#6 » Tue Feb 28, 2023 6:19 pm

Yes, thanks for sharing those links loloretro. There are currently 4 issues of Dreamzone scanned and available online (at the website you linked to above and mirrored elsewhere), but the other 25 issues have not yet been preserved in this way. Given that I have a full run in my possession I figured the best thing to do would be to get them scanned and shared.

If I'm unable to raise the full amount needed, then I'll see if I can just proceed with part of the work. I.E. just Dreamzone, just Dreamcast Arena, or a partial run of either. I think there are economies of scale involved though, so if I can just get the whole batch done all in one go then that would be ideal.

Thanks to those who have dipped into their pockets or helped spread the word thus far.

Loloretro
chill
Posts: 300

Re: Crowdfunding £450 to scan 42 Dreamcast magazines ('Dreamzone' and 'Dreamcast Arena')

Post#7 » Wed Mar 01, 2023 4:51 am

You should check with the media library if they can't help you voluntarily. I have a friend who works for a media library who had scanned some particular documents for me.

cypressRU
lithium
Posts: 37

Re: Crowdfunding £450 to scan 42 Dreamcast magazines ('Dreamzone' and 'Dreamcast Arena')

Post#8 » Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:03 am

I really hope you make your goal bro! How long will the gofund me be open? I might be able to help after this month

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