Sounds good, vetz - keep the work going! 😀

kind regards
soggi

actively archiving is the only way, companies can't be expected to and won't host things that are not in the business current plan, even if sometimes they get it wrong.

i am more surprised by how many old drivers are still available from official outlets, i think they are sometimes just left in place and may eventually disappear through changes in website layout, operation, broken links, retirement of old servers and so on.

its a race between digital copies of old drivers lasting long enough online and actual hardware lasting long enough to use the driver 😀

WolverineDK wrote on 2024-12-08, 22:46:

That is cool, and awesome. Where will they be uploaded to ? vogonsdrivers , or some where else ? 😀

It'll be a webpage for maximum accessibility. I've already found the domain for it. One member here on VOGONS (which I won't name atm) have offered free hosting for the website including all the files.

Atm I have everything stored in CSV files which will be imported into a SQL database. It's just too many products and files to handle manually.

I also intend that products which have floppy or CD images available on Vogonsdrivers or archive.org to be linked to the product page which would make it very simple to find everything in one spot. Many Creative productupdates require the bundled CD/floppies.

How large is the file collection?

kind regards
soggi

They also don't have direct links to newer drivers for their newer products on their respective pages.

https://old.reddit.com/r/SoundBlasterOfficial … er_links_i_got/

For example link for current driver version 6.0.105.65 for Sound Blaster AE-5 series cards is http://files.creative.com/creative/bin/driver … staller_W10.exe.
Link for current Sound Blaster Command application version 3.5.10 is https://files.creative.com/creative/bin/apps/ … p_3.5.10.00.exe. This application is also referenced on Chocolatey.

Creative recently started to show a message across all their webpages about maintenance downtime at the 19th of January. This kicked me into highgear to complete this project. Better safe than sorry incase they launch a full redesign and remove alot of old stuff completely.

I now have over all files in the English section:

- 966 driver & application files for a total of 23gb with file descriptions and supported OS's
- 1366 manuals for a total of 7,53gb

I also have an index of mapping these files to a list of 1605 products with their respectively categories. This means it will be possible to connect which files and manuals belong to which product.

Very nice job. I didn't think there would be that many.

I wouldn't be surprised if this "maintenance" actually means "delete all legacy files from the servers".

Great job vetz!

Looks like you got there just in time.

They are Trying to Kill the PCI Slot computers and Sound cards.
But I have an HP z440 with 16-core Xeon and 256gb of RAM
Nvme SSD’s and 100tb of Hard drive Storage and it is Rock Solid Stable and Reliable, Dependable.
I am Running Dual Boot Win-10-Pro and Win-11-Pro

I use the Audigy RX Win-10 Drivers for my Audigy 2zs Sound cards.
Works great.

I already downloaded and Saved these drivers to my USB thumb drive

These computer companies just want to Recycle these PCI Slot computers and Sell you
New computer. But there is nothing wrong with allot of these PCI slot computers.
They have enough CPU to Run Win-11
A Ivy Bridge Quad Core i5-3470 is enough to run Win-11
.
These computer companies don’t want to support these computers anymore and want to discontinue them
So they can sell you a New computer. But Microsoft won’t let these computer components die off.

Hello @vetz, I've talked to @Joseph_Joestar about this and I've found a workaround for Creative nuking drivers off their pages.

1. Visit the page of the card you're interested in, for example https://support.creative.com/Products/Product … Audigy&CatName= is for Audigy 2 ZS
2. In the next card of the same browser, go to this page: https://support.creative.com/downloads/welcom … erType=0#type_0
This should open the driver page of your previously viewed card with results for Windows 7 x64 (nOS=31) in English (nLanguageLocale=1033). I'm not sure what nDriverType means, probably "All". And I'm not sure what type_0 means.

Best of luck in your archiving efforts!

moog wrote on 2025-01-19, 17:20:

Hello @vetz, I've talked to @Joseph_Joestar about this and I've found a workaround for Creative nuking drivers off their pages. […]
Show full quote

Hello @vetz, I've talked to @Joseph_Joestar about this and I've found a workaround for Creative nuking drivers off their pages.

1. Visit the page of the card you're interested in, for example https://support.creative.com/Products/Product … Audigy&CatName= is for Audigy 2 ZS
2. In the next card of the same browser, go to this page: https://support.creative.com/downloads/welcom … erType=0#type_0
This should open the driver page of your previously viewed card with results for Windows 7 x64 (nOS=31) in English (nLanguageLocale=1033). I'm not sure what nDriverType means, probably "All". And I'm not sure what type_0 means.

Best of luck in your archiving efforts!

Thanks, but I'm fully aware. I managed to find alot of tricks to get all the product IDs and thus the correct download page, like that their Chinese webpage does not require CAPTCHA to query the download links and this AJAX service which provides all the products in a specified subcategory https://support.creative.com/Products/ajax/aj … atName=Graphics

As I mentioned in my previous post, all is now archived so now its on to the next phase to setup the webpage.

If someone would be interested in giving a hand with finding links to floppy images and ISOs of driver CDs that exist around the web (archive.org/vogonsdrivers come to mind) that would be appreciated.