Sad News - greendyk.nl Website Closing Down

[EugeneNine]

I haven't ran windows since 2002 so I'm not impacted by that driver issue.
That digital sender though you plug into a network and it creates the pdf and e-mails it to you so it can run standalone without any computer even.

I just don't have space to put one

[damaltor]

So, to get beack on topic:
- The Site will go down
- The owner does not accept free hosting offers?
What do?

[Dave Frederickson]

The concern here seems to be the preservation of vintage manuals. While a flatbed scanner with an ADF is certainly the easiest way to scan a manual, some manuals are perfect bound, like the 85B, and scanning on a flatbed would require removal of the binding or at least damaging it.

More recently camera-based scanning is becoming popular. The Portable PLUS Service Manual was scanned with a phone camera and software that would correct the distortion due to perspective.

http://www.jeffcalc.hp41.eu/hpplus/files...manual.pdf

Fancy camera mounts are even available. This one works with an iPAD.

https://ipaddocumentcamera.com/products/...ics-module

Book scanners are also available.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Fast-Boo...97588.html

Also, Manuals Plus, who sold many vintage HP manuals closed in 2015. Some of us were lucky enough to get in on the liquidation of stock and were able to buy some manuals at a very good price.

I recently discovered that Tucker Electronics, who sold vintage HP equipment and manuals has reduced their inventory to just a few scanned copies of manuals.

Finally, 360 Technologies who once had the largest inventory of vintage HP equipment has sold out and can no longer be found on the web or eBay (360dibs).

Dave

[EugeneNine]

I believe it was google who created a scanner that has the glass shaped like /\ with a prism under so you can simply open a bound book and lay it on top without stretching the binding.

My 48sx manuals were spiral bound so it was easy enough to simply 'unscrew' the spring, scan and then put them back together.

still off topic but I've been searching for OCR software, preferably open source and not windows only so I can OCR manuals.

[Raymond Del Tondo]

(12-13-2018 12:51 PM)EugeneNine Wrote:  hmm, a quick check says they are not too expensive, tempting https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-9100C-C1313A...bJxa3:rk:2f:0

I'm still trying to find decent OCR software to run the 48sx manuals through though

Slightly OT, but: Back then I used an HP ScanJet 4500C with ADF, but that thing was too slow and sometimes didn't pull the sheets correctly, and duplex scanning was an unreliable pain. A wheel replacement kit would have been more expensive than the unit itself.

So I looked for a newer scanner, but even the used semi-professional units which could scan more than two pages per minute were more than 100 Euro back then, and had several thousands of work hours beind them. So in addition to the unit, you could pay for a wheel replacement kit, if available at all.

So I went for a new HP ScanJet 2500 pro f1, which offered what I wanted: Landscape format, duplex scan in one go (two scan lines. No paper wrapping acrobatics), new and unused, and therefore reliable transport mechanics, and speeeed!
The ADF feed is for less than 50 sheets, but the software allows for feeding the sheets in several chunks for the same result PDF.

[Thomas Okken]

(12-13-2018 03:53 PM)damaltor Wrote:  So, to get beack on topic:
- The Site will go down
- The owner does not accept free hosting offers?
What do?

Has anyone asked the owner whether he objects to the site being hosted elsewhere? There is a difference between "not interested, but thank you for the offer" and "I specifically don't want that." I suspect it's the latter but from what I've heard here so far that's not entirely clear.

Assuming he doesn't mind, one could clone the site by simply loading all the pages in a browser one by one, and saving them as "web page, complete," so you get all the images and css and whatnot, and then finally running some scripts to fix all the links so it all works together once more.

That would be tedious, but could be done in a matter of hours. But you'd still be left with a bunch of illegal content. As much as I would enjoy having a complete snapshot of greendyk.nl, I wouldn't risk hosting it on my own site.

[EugeneNine]

(12-13-2018 04:27 PM)Raymond Del Tondo Wrote:  

(12-13-2018 12:51 PM)EugeneNine Wrote:  hmm, a quick check says they are not too expensive, tempting https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-9100C-C1313A...bJxa3:rk:2f:0

I'm still trying to find decent OCR software to run the 48sx manuals through though

Slightly OT, but: Back then I used an HP ScanJet 4500C with ADF, but that thing was too slow and sometimes didn't pull the sheets correctly, and duplex scanning was an unreliable pain. A wheel replacement kit would have been more expensive than the unit itself.

So I looked for a newer scanner, but even the used semi-professional units which could scan more than two pages per minute were more than 100 Euro back then, and had several thousands of work hours beind them. So in addition to the unit, you could pay for a wheel replacement kit, if available at all.

So I went for a new HP ScanJet 2500 pro f1, which offered what I wanted: Landscape format, duplex scan in one go (two scan lines. No paper wrapping acrobatics), new and unused, and therefore reliable transport mechanics, and speeeed!
The ADF feed is for less than 50 sheets, but the software allows for feeding the sheets in several chunks for the same result PDF.

I'll make a new thread
http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-11948.html

[Dave Frederickson]

(12-13-2018 05:13 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Has anyone asked the owner whether he objects to the site being hosted elsewhere?

According to the guestbook, Meindert Kuipers did that a couple of days ago.

http://www.greendyk.nl/gastboek/gastenboek.php

FWIW, I tried downloading the site using a website copier, HTTrack, but apparently my IP address was blocked and the download was unsuccessful. I did get some nice pics of Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds.

Dave

[Thomas Okken]

(12-13-2018 05:26 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  

(12-13-2018 05:13 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Has anyone asked the owner whether he objects to the site being hosted elsewhere?

According to the guestbook, Meindert Kuipers did that a couple of days ago.

http://www.greendyk.nl/gastboek/gastenboek.php

FWIW, I tried downloading the site using a website copier, HTTrack, but apparently my IP address was blocked and the download was unsuccessful. I did get some nice pics of Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds.

Dave

Asking "would you be interested if I mirrored your site" and "would you object to me mirroring your site" are two different things. Meindert offered to host; my question was, has anyone asked for permission to host a mirror? Maybe I'm just splitting hairs here but it seems like an important distinction.

Disregarding the fact that hosting that content is illegal anyway, since it's all copyrighted by HP and as far as I know, no one has ever been granted permission to redistribute those materials other than Dave Hicks, and even that is basically a gentlemen's agreement that could be cancelled at any time.

Regarding the purely intellectual challenge of automatically downloading the site, I'm guessing that will require throttling, setting request headers to mimic real browsers, and populating Referer correctly. I've seen at least one other site that blocks downloading and linking by checking Referer.

[pier4r]

Hmm, I cannot see the site (I never visited it before and I don't believe anyone in my Ip network segment did). What a pity though.

I don't really blame the one that is hosting the data, as the companies that created that data - in my opinion- should have released it in the public domain once the product they described went End Of Life; but one has a chance to save it and doesn't do it

[EugeneNine]

I thought HP did release most of the old stuff

[MeindertKuipers]

I did ask the question, as the owner of the site seems to be Dutch and so am I. That would maybe make communication easier, but no response so far ...

(12-13-2018 05:41 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  

(12-13-2018 05:26 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  According to the guestbook, Meindert Kuipers did that a couple of days ago.

http://www.greendyk.nl/gastboek/gastenboek.php

FWIW, I tried downloading the site using a website copier, HTTrack, but apparently my IP address was blocked and the download was unsuccessful. I did get some nice pics of Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds.

Dave

Asking "would you be interested if I mirrored your site" and "would you object to me mirroring your site" are two different things. Meindert offered to host; my question was, has anyone asked for permission to host a mirror? Maybe I'm just splitting hairs here but it seems like an important distinction.

Disregarding the fact that hosting that content is illegal anyway, since it's all copyrighted by HP and as far as I know, no one has ever been granted permission to redistribute those materials other than Dave Hicks, and even that is basically a gentlemen's agreement that could be cancelled at any time.

Regarding the purely intellectual challenge of automatically downloading the site, I'm guessing that will require throttling, setting request headers to mimic real browsers, and populating Referer correctly. I've seen at least one other site that blocks downloading and linking by checking Referer.

[rprosperi]

(12-13-2018 05:13 PM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  Has anyone asked the owner whether he objects to the site being hosted elsewhere? There is a difference between "not interested, but thank you for the offer" and "I specifically don't want that." I suspect it's the latter but from what I've heard here so far that's not entirely clear.

Assuming he doesn't mind, one could clone the site by simply loading all the pages in a browser one by one, and saving them as "web page, complete," so you get all the images and css and whatnot, and then finally running some scripts to fix all the links so it all works together once more.

That would be tedious, but could be done in a matter of hours. But you'd still be left with a bunch of illegal content. As much as I would enjoy having a complete snapshot of greendyk.nl, I wouldn't risk hosting it on my own site.

I specifically asked him and he quite clearly, though politely, declined and said he did not want the site hosted elsewhere. I tried (a bit) to find out why, but after a few questions, other than acknowledging it was not his IP to share, felt I was intruding into his business which he seemed reluctant to discuss, so I dropped it and accepted his polite replies, with profuse thanks for creating and sharing it.

Hopefully Meindert will fare better than I did...

[Eric Rechlin]

It looks like he already shut down the site. What a pity; it was great.

I never even got a chance to look though the 65/67/80 manuals, but if they were as well done as the 41C and 15C manuals, that must have been so much work. Did anyone perchance save those so I can look at them?

[rprosperi]

(12-14-2018 12:17 AM)Eric Rechlin Wrote:  It looks like he already shut down the site. What a pity; it was great.

I never even got a chance to look though the 65/67/80 manuals, but if they were as well done as the 41C and 15C manuals, that must have been so much work. Did anyone perchance save those so I can look at them?

Rats! I fear that by creating this thread, it raised awareness and drove up the traffic, which seems to have led to a decision to close even earlier than planned. Serious

Eric: Much of the content can be found on the wayback machine here:

https://web.archive.org/web/201804211333...dyk.nl:80/

Not all of it was captured it appears; I did run into at least one bad link, but at least some of the 65/67/80 manuals are there.

[Eric Rechlin]

(12-14-2018 12:58 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  Eric: Much of the content can be found on the wayback machine here:

https://web.archive.org/web/201804211333...dyk.nl:80/

Not all of it was captured it appears; I did run into at least one bad link, but at least some of the 65/67/80 manuals are there.

How closely did you look? When I browsed through it, it appeared very little of those manuals were captured.

[rprosperi]

(12-14-2018 02:45 AM)Eric Rechlin Wrote:  How closely did you look? When I browsed through it, it appeared very little of those manuals were captured.

You're right... Sigh... Of the first 25 pages I clicked (earlier), all but 1 came up, but now that I check deeper, there are indeed large gaps, though the pattern of good/bad pages is not clear. Seems my initial foray was just randomly lucky. Such a loss...

[Uli]

Its closed now.

Unfortunately he did not wait until Christmas.

Maybe he open it again, for the last days until Christmas? Please!

[Uli]

Its closed now.

Unfortunately he did not wait until Christmas.

Maybe he open it again, for the last days until Christmas? Please!

[Eric Rechlin]

And the site is now back up! I'm glad to see this was just a temporary thing. Now we have 9 more days to enjoy his wonderful creation.