The Bush Rangers Database for MS-DOS with full manual and disk images

Presented for download are:

• 7 Disk Images in WinImage (.IMA) format
• 1 ZIP file containing the files copied from each floppy
• 1 PDF file which contains full scans of the folder cover, floppy disk labels and manual

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BweO6Y13Cmc4a1lGYk1ESnhkRXc?usp=sharing

Story behind this:

A previous blog post of mine about The Bush Rangers Database for the Apple II showed off Australian published software about our famous bush rangers.  A comment was made that the National Library of Australia held a copy.

Using NLA’s Trove search engine, I was able to find call number NMT 1451 and requested it.  I made the trip in today, ready with my laptop and various memory sticks to scan in the manual.  The NLA is a nothing in and nothing out library – no borrowing and no bags allowed in.

The loans librarian happily presented a folder in front of me, with a sticker ‘IBM version’.
Hmmm….
I showed the librarian a print out of the bibliographic entry for NMT 1451 which described a 1985 48K Apple II version.  The NLA librarian agreed that what they held didn’t match the entry but concluded that was all they had.

Presented to me was a much more up to date version of The Bush Rangers Database, published in 1992 and ported to DOS on 7, 720kb 3.5″ floppy disks.

To make the most of the situation I still persevered (understatement) with the Konica MFD scanners for -3- hours to get an acceptable starting point of files.  The problems I faced were mainly very heavy compression applied to pages and very slow output to USB memory stick.

Overcoming the limitations of scanners is my speciality and I used the single page TIFF files for post-processing each page individually in Adobe Photoshop.  I hope you enjoy the PDF file linked above as I took the time to further scan the folder and disks too.  Adobe Acrobat 11 was used to compile the post-processed files into a single PDF.

An external TEAC USB FDD was used to read the disks into a virtual box of Windows 7 using the WinImage application.  Disks are created as ‘new from source format’ and then read to memory, saved and repeated until you finish the set of disks.  To save wear and tear on the floppies, I extracted the files from the disk images just in case someone can’t mount the .IMA files. This was all done on the spot – quite efficient I think.

Question remains where did the actual Apple II version go from 1985?  Why was it replaced with an IBM port and catalogue not updated?  Not quite inspiring NLA.

Screenshots (converted from original PCX to GIF):

Soapbox:

Comparison between my post-processed page (left) and “out of the box” automatic PDF from the NLA scanner: