Tried wayback machine on cnet and a lot of stuff does not work, like the search features. http://web.archive.org/web/20140325113943/htt … itors/products/
that is the last link I could find that has a check box for CRT but it does not work....
I have a link to GrifffinTechs database, it lists PC/Mac CRT monitors up to about 2001. Not a complete list like Cnet but does have some info: http://web.archive.org/web/20000817070427/htt … in/comdata.html

Dang, I should've made a backup back then 🙁

Hopefully someone made a backup

Maybe this contains what we want ? https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Download.com
Maybe the person who made this has a backup of the website ?

Deksor wrote on 2021-12-02, 22:10:

Maybe this contains what we want ? https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Download.com
Maybe the person who made this has a backup of the website ?

I think that's just drivers and stuff 😒

imi wrote on 2021-12-02, 22:23:

Deksor wrote on 2021-12-02, 22:10:

Maybe this contains what we want ? https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Download.com
Maybe the person who made this has a backup of the website ?

I think that's just drivers and stuff 😒

Yes it is mostly drivers but thanks ! That broadens the driver scope ! I already had some archive links to Cnet's software library but those links are great !
Unfortunately more attempts to get the Cnet review archives have not been good. They use scripting that the wayback did not save so the searches do not work.
Am hoping to stumble on an older late 1990's wayback scan that allows some digging, doing the * thing just stalls with an error due to overload (my words not waybacks ;p )

I tried going to specific CRT pages in the wayback machine that I still had in my history and it doesn't seem like anything got archived there 😒

Take one of those and do a URL edit to next directory up and have Archive.org look for all files, then if they got anything at any date it should be there... if not, guess they were generated on the fly from a backend database... if there are files, it's sorta good, but they'll need reindexing to be much use.

the next url up was just "https://www.cnet.com/products" which redirects to "https://www.cnet.com/reviews"

i.e. "https://www.cnet.com/products/nokia-445xi-crt-monitor-21/"

cnet is even still the top search result in google if you search for nokia 445xi for example :\

this really is a pity as cnet had a whole bunch of CRT specs you couldn't really find anywhere else anymore.

It appears that during summer of 2014 CNET removed 1000's of monitor reviews. March 25, 2014 = 6127 by December 23, 2014 = 2625.
For CRT monitors you can try this: http://web.archive.org/web/20141227110859/htt … s/products/crt/ = 86 CRTs
or http://web.archive.org/web/20150407031323/htt … s/products/crt/ = 66

Hmm other thoughts: finally got 100k urls for CNET products, most are not monitors. The original link to my Asus VS228D was https://www.cnet.com/products/asus-vs228h-led … -hd-1080p-21-5/ and
http://www.cnet.com:80/products/asus-vs228h-p/specs
but those now give a 404 and all show green in Wayback but was able to open the first one for Asus VE228D specs...http://web.archive.org/web/20141102064740/htt … -vs228h-p/specs
My Nokia 446XS original link goes nowhere and by 2014 all Nokia monitors appear to have been removed 🙁

ADDED:
ok made a tiny bit more progress:
during early 2000's the monitors were all linked thru http://computers.cnet.com/ then /hardware/ then 0-1041.html for monitor category:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030408031237/htt … are/0-1041.html
every html starting with 0-2295747-404 is a monitor page (like http://web.archive.org/web/20030408031237/htt … 04-2080185.html for the Samsung SyncMaster 755 DF
so http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://computers … t.com/hardware/*
then filter the 2000 pages with 0-2295747 to give 25 pages or URLS....unfortunately no easy way to search...you get a redirector error...
will dig some more later........

oh hey, that's something to start with at least, thank you ^^

yeah the reviews might have been removed long ago, but the specs pages have still been up until a few months ago, hence why they're still in my browsing history and google results.

imi wrote on 2021-12-04, 20:51:

oh hey, that's something to start with at least, thank you ^^

yeah the reviews might have been removed long ago, but the specs pages have still been up until a few months ago, hence why they're still in my browsing history and google results.

another CNET place was www.computers.com in late 1990's:
http://web.archive.org/web/19991012142232/htt … ,0-16-a,00.html
click a link and it will redirect to http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/ page in year 2000. If you click Review or Specs link on left it will not open saying URL was not archived.
BUT if you delete everything after the .html (from ? to the end) on the URL location bar (or whatever you call it ;p ) it will open the spec page.
I only tested a few but all tested worked.....

Horun wrote on 2021-12-04, 21:05:

BUT if you delete everything after the .html (from ? to the end) on the URL location bar (or whatever you call it ;p ) it will open the spec page.
I only tested a few but all tested worked.....

yeah, I figured that out already ^^ thanks

now I just need to find an easy way to download all of that 😁

imi wrote on 2021-12-04, 21:10:

Horun wrote on 2021-12-04, 21:05:

BUT if you delete everything after the .html (from ? to the end) on the URL location bar (or whatever you call it ;p ) it will open the spec page.
I only tested a few but all tested worked.....

yeah, I figured that out already ^^ thanks

now I just need to find an easy way to download all of that 😁

Yeah writing a script to grab from wayback is not easy 🙁
I also found some info on ZDnets PC Mag site for 17" and 19": warning the links are very long but work ok
ZDnet 17" monitors 47 of
http://web.archive.org/web/200010092129 ... pt=zdpmon1
19" 57 of
http://web.archive.org/web/200010092307 ... pt=zdpmon3

and some info on PC World too but more useless than CNET or ZDNET

If you know the manufacturer, you can search for a prefix / partial URL in the wayback machine to find all pages that match under cnet.com/products/, here's some examples:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cne … ducts/sony-cpd*
and https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cne … sony-multiscan*
and https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cne … ts/viewsonic-e*

Going to just /products/* is no good, there are many more results than wayback machine will allow to display (over 100,000), so filtering that to just 'crt' entries gives only 144 results from that 100k, when there are many more that actually have been archived over the years.
Lots of items are not going to be in the wayback machine, it's hit and miss with what was archived prior to their removal. Some important ones are there though.

One thing we can do instead, is a search for known / important manufacturers of CRTs, sony, philips, nokia with the */url* method above, then filter that to CRT, to get results.

imi wrote on 2021-12-04, 20:51:

yeah the reviews might have been removed long ago, but the specs pages have still been up until a few months ago, hence why they're still in my browsing history and google results.

Yep, those CNet specs pages was the number one resource I was using to decide what motherboards to buy till they suddenly disappeared just a couple of months ago 🙁

Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-12-04, 23:14:

If you know the manufacturer, you can search for a prefix / partial URL in the wayback machine to find all pages that match unde […]
Show full quote

If you know the manufacturer, you can search for a prefix / partial URL in the wayback machine to find all pages that match under cnet.com/products/, here's some examples:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cne … ducts/sony-cpd*
and https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cne … sony-multiscan*
and https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cne … ts/viewsonic-e*

Going to just /products/* is no good, there are many more results than wayback machine will allow to display (over 100,000), so filtering that to just 'crt' entries gives only 144 results from that 100k, when there are many more that actually have been archived over the years.
Lots of items are not going to be in the wayback machine, it's hit and miss with what was archived prior to their removal. Some important ones are there though.

One thing we can do instead, is a search for known / important manufacturers of CRTs, sony, philips, nokia with the */url* method above, then filter that to CRT, to get results.

Ok thanks ! Yes there are going to be missing pages using */http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/* due to overload.
Due to the way Cnet messed things up think we will need multi methods to grab all the old archives 😀
Thanks for giving us another one !