Uncreative Labs

Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:37 am

Is there a site that anyone's using that's like DriverGuide used to be? The drivers/all login doesn't work any longer, and DriverGuide wants the license plate number of my first child's first car or something equally as ridiculous and unnecessarily personal.

I usually try to get drivers straight from the manufacturer when possible, but that's not always easy. So, does anyone have any suggestions for a DriverGuide replacement?

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Best thing I ever saw (for older equipment, anyway) was Mipoli's (not sure of spelling) ftp site. Long since gone, and the mirrors don't seem to be around either. Nonetheless, I got DVD backups of everything (finding those, however, can be a problem). Windrivers went to subscription a long time ago, and even Trident doesn't host it's own drivers like before. I'm bad to snoop around on University ftp sites for drivers and stuff. I can give you the list if need be...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Anybody want to setup a ftp for pre win95 drivers then? I have a few to contribute.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 22 Location: near myself

It's a good idea but i believe it's difficult share a great (useful) number of drivers (problems=band, storage). Probably it's better add a voice in forum for drivers requests, linking it with a sort of ftp,download area. I often used Driverguide and after this change of access policy i believe that life of retrocomputerers it's becoming harder. I don't want to be critic but i believe that retrocomputing is changing from passion to business for too much people. I remember some years ago when you can find old stuff from office and garage for few money or nothing, now there are "minimum prices" "estimated values" people that wants money for broken parts. I hope that vintage area should continue to be a place where share passion for old knowledge and let people feel emotions of pioneeristic computer era. Psss, i can sell you a C64 for 300$ great price! it's without esc key but who uses it? Get it now or probably you will never find another in THAT conditions.... Very Happy

.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Well, here's an apparent working mirror of "mpoli.fi":

ftp://213.135.34.30/pub/mirror/ftp.mpoli.fi/hardware/

Gentlemen, start your FTP Clients... Very Happy

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

here is a motherboard manual and other archive
http://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Matsonic/manual/index.html

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

I remember back when there were hundreds of ftps out there, now most them are dead. i think i have an iso of some old drivers on the old 386 but i lost the setup disk and the cmos batt died again. had video driver for ati diamond curris and s3. sound drivers for lots of creative isa cards and some network setup stuff. i'll see if there any good ftp's left.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

I save every driver i download
and sometimes that is not enough
I recently was given 3 systems
1- asus p2b I have 2 running here so that's no problem'and a chaintech slot 1 up to 76 or 83 megs
I was able toi get the indo
third was a socket 7 matsonic 5abba
which turned out to be a ms 6261 -- any socket 7 chip but no drivers as all were pretty basic nmb.
but I sweated bvullets first finding a page that cossed from 5abba to ms 6261 after that i was able to find the manual

http://www.elhvb.com/
not drivers but boards
there are some unidentifies files in one directory that may be drivers for os.

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

Shoot, I remember when _______-drivers.com (place whatever you are looking for where the underscores are) got started, and they did not pull their downloads off of driverguide, those were the days of downloading drivers for old PC's off the internet.

I too save every driver I download, but I take it up a notch, and put them on a free file-storage account I have, and hyperlink to the files on my website. The downloads for drivers are kind of small right now, but it's slowly growing as time allows me to add them. This is also nice because I don't have to pull out a CD or wade through the 8 partitions on my hard disk on the main PC just to find whatever driver it is I'm looking for.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

I am not trying to feed a city or supply an army, but there are " logistical" problems
possibly usin a www storage site will help..
I bought a 20g drive and moved and filled it up
within a year,. admittedly some stuff should have been stored on cd's or other media;. it was on the e: drive for my convenience,
Things like collections of music files and images of cd';s were stored where I could get at them when I "
lost" a needed cd or a file I had to use.

I was given 2 systems that had 40g drives.
after a difficult time of it, I managed to install all the drivers needed to support the mb devices ( sould video etc) and got them up running w98.

about that time the 20g started to get flakey ( again) I had scanned and run spinrite, but more errors showed up.
I quickly copied all to one of the 40g drives
on top of the win 98 install. then one of them
refused toi be detected ( it was a worn pin on the power cable) and I copied everytrhing ( again)
to the other 40g.
I have most of the files that did not copy, on 2 sets of cd-r's that I made a couple of years apart, when the collecxtion was only 8g in size.
I have made specific backups of directories motherboards, sound, video, printers, scanners, etc
on a separate set of cd's
I have copied cd images to several 4g scsi drives
and all have run out of space,
nexzt time a BIG EAGLE flys over the house, I will purchase a decent sized driev or a few medium sized drives and make hd backups again.

qhwnb I started out it was 360k disksm, then 1,2m then tape and 1.44 flkoppies
now cd's each media requires that you break uop things in CHUNKS,
I never used Backup as it was unreadable as an individual file.

Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 10:53 pm

I know that this thread is mainly about FREE driver download sites like what driverguide used to be.

But what about subscription sites?

I know from experience that sometimes it's more trouble finding a free solution when there's often a very inexpensive one available. Trouble is, no-one wants to put their money down on something unless they know it's going to be worth it.

Has anyone tried any of the paid services?

Maybe free driver download sites have gone the way of the free ISP?

Jamnar.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

Has anyone tried any of the paid services

Yep, and they're not any better than free ones. They just point to a (often non-existant) company's driver site; few host drivers themselves. Best thing to do at this point is to get broadband, fire up an FTP client and then the DVD recorder. Downloading one site now as we speak. Yep, it's hoarding, but it's sad times for older drivers..

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

T-R-A wrote:

Quote:

Has anyone tried any of the paid services

Yep, and they're not any better than free ones. They just point to a (often non-existant) company's driver site; few host drivers themselves. Best thing to do at this point is to get broadband, fire up an FTP client and then the DVD recorder. Downloading one site now as we speak. Yep, it's hoarding, but it's sad times for older drivers..

I figured those pay sites are not any better. I'm pretty wary of anything that asks for you to pay for something that you could once get off the manufacturer's website FOR FREE!

In the dark ages before Total Hardware 99, I tried to get onto some site that claimed to have old owner's manuals for old computers, so I paid $5.00, and discovered it was all just a bunch of useless PDF files that held nothing more than maybe 3-4 lines of info on the machine. That's not an owners manual, thar be a ripoff-trap.

What I'm doing is uploading them to my site, and double saving them to any sort of media I can, and am considering setting up "default" setups for my own systems so that I don't have to hunt for drivers, because everything is already pre-loaded. I'm hoping that my downloads section might be useful eventually since I end up with some WEIRD hardware from time to time.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

I'd strongly suggest anyone (who can) grab a copy of the mpoli mirror listed above and burn it to DVD (Walter---copying to drives is fine, but I'd put a lot more faith in some quality optical media). It's about 1.5GB, and you may have to either delete some false-positive files that your virus-scanner catches or bypass it altogether. Being hosted in Poland, it's not likely to be around long (European mirrors have a bad tendency to just "disappear"). I'm getting a final download of it as we speak and I'll combine it with other drivers and make 3 DVD copies (1 working-copy, 2 archived).

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

when I " inherited" 2 newer wsystems and had to deal with compaq and hp, they send me a link to driver guids
and I could easily d/l the required drivers.
of course, some were not usable
and I never got a video driver for another board. ( an msi)

it's a nightmare
sometimes all you can do is use a newer o=s and hope it is on the cd.

keeping thinks organized and separated / sorted is another kind of nightmare.

sometimes I put video and sound drivers under \motherboards
because that makes them easier to RE-find when needed..
My main problem is old drives subject to sudden failure
and the warning from a well-intentioned friend that ALL CD-R's Fade in a year or so,.

one of the experts says that a stored hard drive is a better way to save files. not one spinning it';s life away.

I know that this is far from finding a site, but it isd relasted to having needed drivers and files.

I think some kind of exchange has to be set up so these files can be shared among several people who " listen and are aware of the need for old drivers.
I am 72 and I want to cend copies of my files to several others, so that these old things will not be lost.