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Re: [OM] Online Repair Manuals (WAS: Flash Question)

Subject: Re: [OM] Online Repair Manuals (WAS: Flash Question)
From: Mark Dapoz <md@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 22:55:29 -0500 (EST)
On Wed, 31 Jan 2001, Chris O'Neill wrote:

> On 31 Jan 2001, at 20:14, Chip Stratton wrote:
> 
> > I bought an OM1 which would not  fire the flash. I took off the bottom
> > plate, and found a little piece of deteriorated foam had made its way
> > between a little switch down there. After cleaning it off, the flash sync
> > worked perfectly.

Umm, hate to tell you this Chip, but that little bit of foam is supposed to
be there.  I believe its purpose is to debounce the contact and prevent
the flash from firing multiple times.

> Wouldn't it be nice if the repair manuals were also available on one or 
> more of the online manual archives?  Personally, I don't think I'd ever 
> attempt a repair, as I'm a real "Tim Allen" when it comes to that kinda 
> stuff.  But, based on alot of recent messages in the list about fixing 
> various minor OM woes, perhaps being able to go online and look stuff 
> up in the appropriate repair manual would be helpful?

Hans and I briefly discussed adding the repair manuals to the eSIF.  As a
test, I scanned the full OM-2 service manual to see how it would turn out.
Besides being a lot of work, there are a few logistical problems with
electronically distributing the manual.  A 150 dpi pdf of the manual
takes 28MB, a rather large file for most people to download.  At that
resolution and compression, some of the detailed drawings begin to suffer.
A 300 dpi pdf would fix that, but it produces an 86MB file.  To get a good
quality (ie. useful) scan, you need to start with either an original manual
or a first generation copy.  Finding such a manual is extremely difficult
these days.  Some of the later manuals are still available from Olympus,
but at $50+ each, that quickly becomes expensive.  I'll probably pass the
OM-2 pdf off to Hans for inclusion on the eSIF and see how that goes.

A word of warning about the service manuals.  They expect you to know what
you are doing!  They are not teaching guides.  I put them on the same level
as the automotive service manuals that car manufacturers offer.  They're
meant to be used by professionals, not hobbyists, and as a result the manuals
are very terse.  Olympus added the additional feature that they're written
in Japanese-English, so you sometimes have to guess at what they're trying
to say :-)
                                -mark


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