SquallStrife wrote on 2020-06-01, 07:50:

I guess I can open up the question to the community, would you see it as acceptable to have a paid tier with, say, FTP access to the archive (in addition to the existing FTP upload system), or something along those lines?

The monthly fee would be something small, a few dollars, but there would need to be enough people onboard to make it viable for me to move to a dedicated host before these things would be possible.

What are your thoughts?

Hmm sure a member access upgrade to FTP that would help pay for some extra BW might be a good idea if that is what you are thinking. Maybe a $20 fee to open a separate FTP account and then a 1 month, 6 month or year type "donation" to continue it ? I would donate to that, but am guessing you would need at least a few dozen to justify upgrading/changing hosts.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-06-01, 20:48:

What about something like this... You have people volunteer to set up ftp mirrors?

I have a 200Mb up/down symmetrical FTTH connection but cannot really open host (TOS thing) from home or would offer but do have a two other offsite commercial servers, one ran online FPS games for a while. The only issue would be to DL all the current content OR have a way in a driver submitted page to add an external link <- think that might be a better way to go if considering alternate mirrors. just a thought....

How viable is P2P file sharing for something like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncthing

Buying a server and co-locating it was an idea I considered, but it's expensive, both in initial outlay and ongoing. Somehow it's cheaper to rent an entire dedicated server, than it is to rent rackspace and BYO server.

I've been researching possible options, but the cheapest suitable service is at least 2x what I'm paying now. That does give us 1TB of storage though, so a good chunk of space to expand scope a little bit, and start looking at some of the edge cases in this thread where a file wasn't a *great* fit for the site.

Having a handful of people in possession of an archive is another good idea, I'd need to come up with some kind of way to package such an archive, so you don't just have a meaningless ball of files.

Edit: P2P sounds fascinating, I wonder how that would work in terms of the site with descriptions and whatnot...

SquallStrife wrote on 2020-06-02, 00:39:

Buying a server and co-locating it was an idea I considered, but it's expensive, both in initial outlay and ongoing. Somehow it' […]
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Buying a server and co-locating it was an idea I considered, but it's expensive, both in initial outlay and ongoing. Somehow it's cheaper to rent an entire dedicated server, than it is to rent rackspace and BYO server.

I've been researching possible options, but the cheapest suitable service is at least 2x what I'm paying now. That does give us 1TB of storage though, so a good chunk of space to expand scope a little bit, and start looking at some of the edge cases in this thread where a file wasn't a *great* fit for the site.

Having a handful of people in possession of an archive is another good idea, I'd need to come up with some kind of way to package such an archive, so you don't just have a meaningless ball of files.

Edit: P2P sounds fascinating, I wonder how that would work in terms of the site with descriptions and whatnot...

A scenario that comes to mind would be somehow exporting everything as directory/file structure with static html , sending it archive.org's way to seed and distribute as an archive (if they would want it) and updating ever few months or yearly .

I don't know how feasible or practical that would be .

Space-wise, why even bother with a hosting provider. Google Drive is a whole $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year for 2TB.

I'm sure with some google API fun you could just use it for hosting the files. Surely that is cheaper than paying for hosting.
https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/about-sdk

It depends if Google Drive has or not some traffic cap and how big, because with Dropbox (Paid) i hit is more than once, for example where SteamOS came out, i made 1 partition mode, original it was (4 or 5 mess) and i hit it. I wasnt see big i thing 3-5 GB and not zillion of users.

Yeah, G.Drive/OneDrive/Dropbox aren't really file hosting solutions, I'd rather not go down that path.

You can't rely on google to continue any service for more than 2 months: https://killedbygoogle.com/

I'm "Meh" about considering anything regarding archive.org given their current legal issues. They may not be around too much longer. Which would be the greatest tragedy the Internet has suffered to date, but by their own hand (which honestly really pisses me off)

Paralel wrote on 2020-06-02, 23:04:

I'm "Meh" about considering anything regarding archive.org given their current legal issues. They may not be around too much longer. Which would be the greatest tragedy the Internet has suffered to date, but by their own hand (which honestly really pisses me off)

Ironically enough, it's because of events like that I want to archive the drivers. Having a hard copy of my own would insure I can utilize older tech even after the VOGONS provider some day goes down. (Hopefully not soon, but you get my point.)

This is the attorney that is representing the media companies against Archive.org and a little brief on her file of legal challenges. I bet she will get more in fees than the companies she represents get if they win.
https://www.dwt.com/people/m/mcnamara-elizabeth-a
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17211300 … ternet-archive/
It is all about the books on loan, not the website archive or software archive they have.

How is the archive.org book loan thing any different than a public library other than the books being digital?

I'm sure these companies requested these books be taken down before suing archive.org.. right? right?

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-06-03, 01:52:

How is the archive.org book loan thing any different than a public library other than the books being digital?

I'm sure these companies requested these books be taken down before suing archive.org.. right? right?

It actually is not any different than a libary as the books on archive have a time limit to read them, you cannot just download them (from the ones I read)

You would think so but maybe not, many under current lockdowns (no libraries open, many states have no book stores open) those publishers may have seen a huge decline in income (like many of us) and sought the easiest remedy to that. Is also possible she is an ambulance chaser lawyer and checked and contacted those publishers telling them she can get them some money. Have seen that in the past many times in my decades of walking the planet....

I have a couple of candidates which you may feel are worth adding. They're kinda related, but I'll do them in separate posts for clarity.

First is a "manual" of sorts for the ESS 688 sound card that I've had a journey with in this thread: No-name ES688F card: Time to ditch it?

It's basically a PDF of what I've figured out about the card, including partial jumper settings. And it's the only documentation for this card that I know of.

EDIT: PDF updated 2020-06-08

Next is the utility ESDETECT.EXE. It detects the presence of an ESS sound card, and spits out the address if it finds one. A very simple tool that was invaluable when experimenting with jumpers. I didn't spot this in any of the ESS downloads on Vogons Drivers; I actually found it in an OS/2 driver package (688os2.zip on this page). It's the only exe in the package that runs in MS DOS, so I've zipped it up on its own here.

I have found some old CD-ROMs, mostly OEM and found in magazines, with old browsers and old graphics and video drivers. Most of the are in Italian, tho... I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in having a look.

pascalbrax wrote on 2020-06-05, 08:44:

I have found some old CD-ROMs, mostly OEM and found in magazines...

How old are they? Maybe someone will get interested in.

ruthan wrote on 2020-06-02, 03:35:

It depends if Google Drive has or not some traffic cap and how big

Google Drive does have some traffic cap, if many people downloads files rapidly, they will "lock" the download, but you can work around it with creating a copy on your drive (theres an option for that) and download it from your own drive.

Roman555 wrote on 2020-06-05, 08:55:

pascalbrax wrote on 2020-06-05, 08:44:

I have found some old CD-ROMs, mostly OEM and found in magazines...

How old are they? Maybe someone will get interested in.

The Matrox and Creative drivers are around 1999-2000 and the browsers go from an old IE from 1996 to 2000. Again, probably most of this software is in Italian.

pascalbrax wrote on 2020-06-05, 12:12:

Roman555 wrote on 2020-06-05, 08:55:

pascalbrax wrote on 2020-06-05, 08:44:

I have found some old CD-ROMs, mostly OEM and found in magazines...

How old are they? Maybe someone will get interested in.

The Matrox and Creative drivers are around 1999-2000 and the browsers go from an old IE from 1996 to 2000. Again, probably most of this software is in Italian.

They're drivers none the less. Just the kind people struggle to find anywhere else besides archives like here.