Well, their download page still has really old stuff so I guess just download from there?

Looks like they took away anonymous read access to their ftp.

Or was there even older stuff than what they have available on their download page?

It was at least going back to the socket 7 era, if not further

I've written a little script to get everything from "Pentium (Socket 4/5?)", "Pentium Pro", Socket 7, Slot 1 and Slot A from Biostar. Including BIOS, Manual, Jumper settings and test reports.

I'll post it here when it's done.

EDIT: Here's what I got. https://mega.nz/#!W8hilCqR!GZCya1uZfMoq3tjVdK … avRMTovk1ICLl8c

I got most of this from different Biostar sites on Wayback Machine, all from different periods in the 90s and 00s.

Contains manuals, jumper settings, test results (hardware validation, spec vs actual result, etc), latest BIOS and manuals where possible. Some have multiple jumper settings or multiple manuals from different periods in time. Some are PDFs of the actual manual, some are just HTML pages that I saved as a PDF. I also found some 486 stuff and a single 386 thing on some of their subsidiary sites. I had to get a bunch of it by hand, but it turned out pretty well as a nice little collection.

I haven't verified any of the BIOS files.

I think this is a nice starting point. I'll see what else can be scraped later.

Even though this thread is already inactive for 1287 days, I would like to have this archived stuff, did you keep an offline copy somewhere and did you ever scrape more?

x0zm_ has not been active a long time.....
Not sure how far back you need but made a Archive TXT of my adventures in searching Biostar after seeing that post about a year after when searching for 8500 and 8600 info.
Maybe something in it will help....

Yes I would also like this backup!!

This archive actually has downloable BIOS files: https://web.archive.org/web/20010617055955/ht … com.tw/support/
it covers a few more than https://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/Biosta … bios/index.html
Unfortunately x0zm_ will probably not going to come back 🙁

I was looking for a particular BIOS and learned a few things in the process.

One funny thing about archive.org is that it doesn't let you search for specific files inside an archived website, but it gives you the impression that it does. Sometimes it works though.

For example, if you open web.archive.org, input http://www.biostar.com.tw/ and look for an URL containing p4m8m nothing comes up, but the file is there and you can access it with the direct link http://web.archive.org/web/200606171208 ... m421bf.exe

Keep that in mind the next time you need an old BIOS or driver from archive.org! It might still be there! One should be able to look for .zip, or .exe and find quite a lot of archived files, but try it and see how many files you find... I guess this dishonest tactic is to limit bandwidth.

Another useful tip is to use the "Site Map" feature, which lets you browse a website with broken links, or one that has a lot of flash and thus it's impossible to navigate through it.

tauro wrote on 2023-06-19, 22:16:

I was looking for a particular BIOS and learned a few things in the process. […]
Show full quote

I was looking for a particular BIOS and learned a few things in the process.

One funny thing about archive.org is that it doesn't let you search for specific files inside an archived website, but it gives you the impression that it does. Sometimes it works though.

For example, if you open web.archive.org, input http://www.biostar.com.tw/ and look for an URL containing p4m8m nothing comes up, but the file is there and you can access it with the direct link http://web.archive.org/web/200606171208 ... m421bf.exe

Keep that in mind the next time you need an old BIOS or driver from archive.org! It might still be there! One should be able to look for .zip, or .exe and find quite a lot of archived files, but try it and see how many files you find... I guess this dishonest tactic is to limit bandwidth.

Another useful tip is to use the "Site Map" feature, which lets you browse a website with broken links, or one that has a lot of flash and thus it's impossible to navigate through it.

Yes there are ways to trick a better search. I like using *. As an example: http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.biostar.com. … rd/socket_775/*
then type p4m is filter box (as in your case), and you can see many 😀 Note if it lists one that has just 1 capture or 1 unique the odds of it being good are lower.

Horun wrote on 2023-06-20, 01:49:

tauro wrote on 2023-06-19, 22:16:

I was looking for a particular BIOS and learned a few things in the process. […]
Show full quote

I was looking for a particular BIOS and learned a few things in the process.

One funny thing about archive.org is that it doesn't let you search for specific files inside an archived website, but it gives you the impression that it does. Sometimes it works though.

For example, if you open web.archive.org, input http://www.biostar.com.tw/ and look for an URL containing p4m8m nothing comes up, but the file is there and you can access it with the direct link http://web.archive.org/web/200606171208 ... m421bf.exe

Keep that in mind the next time you need an old BIOS or driver from archive.org! It might still be there! One should be able to look for .zip, or .exe and find quite a lot of archived files, but try it and see how many files you find... I guess this dishonest tactic is to limit bandwidth.

Another useful tip is to use the "Site Map" feature, which lets you browse a website with broken links, or one that has a lot of flash and thus it's impossible to navigate through it.

Yes there are ways to trick a better search. I like using *. As an example: http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.biostar.com. … rd/socket_775/*
then type p4m is filter box (as in your case), and you can see many 😀 Note if it lists one that has just 1 capture or 1 unique the odds of it being good are lower.

Hey thanks!

As for the asterisks I don't understand. If I write this url www.biostar.com.tw/products/mainboard/socket_775/ the asterisks are added automatically. Did you mean searching by subfolders? Because you are right, that works!

I didn't know I would get different results (actual files!) searching by subfolder.

I just figured out that you also get the results if you just use www.biostar.com.tw/products/

So that subfolder is the key, it seems. I wonder if that's all it takes and if this will work for all other websites. And I really wonder for how long will archive.org allow us to access these files, when will they change the search box functionality, start to charge, or simply, erase the files permanently.

Someone with time and lots of hard drive space should back up everything before it's too late. This could be handy.