I apologize in advance if this is not A.T. material.

I recently got a job at a company that makes hardware interfaces for big machinery (steel smelting, ultrasonic testing, etc) and have been having a blast learning how to program this stuff and work with PLCs and National Instruments cards. It's gotten me very interested at the idea of rolling my own tuning and diagnostic software. However, even before I purchase an interface (like the B&B electronics LDV6x), I'll need to get ahold of some SAE specification documents, specifically:

J1850 Class B Communication Network Interface
J1979 E/E Diagnostic Test Modes
J2012 Diagnostic Codes and Procedures
J2178 Class B Data Communication Network Messages
J2190 Enhanced E/E Diagnostic Test Modes

When I was an undergrad at Purdue they always had the latest SAE handbooks in the engineering library. The problem is, between these 5 documents there are something like 250+ pages of material... that's an awful lot to photocopy.

I know the SAE website sells hard copies of these documents, but they go for around $70 each. Is there any place that I can (legally) get them for cheaper? Even looking on Amazon.com I haven't found any SAE handbooks for sale for less than $200.

Any tips? Thanks!

Pay some poor soul to scan them in to pdf. I'd offer but thats probably 5 hours work and I don't work for others for less than 100 an hour.

Can't you get the stuff a lot cheaper if you join SAE?

You will have to pay SAE to get them legally.

I visited my alma mater this weekend and consulted with a librarian who let me copy as many pages of the handbook as I wanted to... 107 pages later, I have copies of J1979 and J2190. That should be more than enough for me to start writing a code scanner / datalogging program. If I make considerable progress that warrants the use of further documents I'll purchase those from the SAE.

Thanks for the input guys!