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Old 17th Feb 2012, 1:01 pm   #1
ben
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Default Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

I'm sure many of you will have used the excellent Philips customer care website to get hold of manuals for older equipment. In the past I've downloaded manuals for things like charley deck VCRs, late 1970s tape decks/stereo gear, etc.

Yesterday I tried to download a manual for a TV produced about 2000, but got an unavailability message for the product list. Tried a few other things too with the same problem.

An email to them produced the response that, due to the age, the documentation is no longer available! So it looks like all those old manuals have been taken down. Please tell me that's not true! Anyone else had experiences with this?
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Old 17th Feb 2012, 2:28 pm   #2
mark pirate
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Default Re: Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

That is a great shame, this was a brilliant resource for older Philips gear. I have not used the site for a while and, as you say, it was an excellent site.

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Old 17th Feb 2012, 2:39 pm   #3
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Default Re: Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

The worst thing is, not only is the site down, they're not even sending individuals the manuals requested via email, by the looks of it. It would be a shame to see all that stuff lost. Maybe the 'wayback machine' is worth a try? I'm not experienced with that kind of 'recovery' though.
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Old 17th Feb 2012, 3:52 pm   #4
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Default Re: Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

As you say a real shame.

And very unlike HP - who allocated someone a couple of years ago to scan as many old manuals as possible and put them on their Agilent site. The guy even got in touch with the Yahoo hp-agilent-equipment mailing list looking for old manuals that he did not have in the paper archives. The deal was that if you sent them, he would scan them for the site, refund the postage and return them.

Just checked, and everything is still up. Put in 5328A, which is a 1970's counter-timer that I have, and it returned an apps note on time interval measurement, the instrument service and user manuals, and the Option 11 service and user manual.

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Old 17th Feb 2012, 5:38 pm   #5
Philips210
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Default Re: Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

Hi.

Any chance of the link to the website please?

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Symon.
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Old 18th Feb 2012, 10:28 am   #6
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Default Re: Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ben View Post
Maybe the 'wayback machine' is worth a try? I'm not experienced with that kind of 'recovery' though.
The trouble is that Wayback only provides the URLs. If the files have been removed from the server at the specified location then they won't be accessible.

It's a shame that the company can't hand over the archive to a new and trustworthy custodian!
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Old 18th Feb 2012, 9:14 pm   #7
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Default Re: Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

Hi.

I have used the main Philips website for user manuals on many occasions but am I correct in assuming that service data is/was available from the same source? This was why I asked for the correct link to the service data section of Philips website re post #5.

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Old 26th Mar 2012, 4:28 am   #8
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Default Re: Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

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Originally Posted by ColinBarrett View Post
The trouble is that Wayback only provides the URLs. If the files have been removed from the server at the specified location then they won't be accessible.
I recently used the WBM to access a knitting pattern for my computerless sister in law. The site was long gone but I could access it at a number of time periods in its life. I have previously used the WBM to track the technical history and growth of a company that was giving evidence for the claimant in a negligence/insurance dispute. I was able to see how they started in business and to assess their technical credibility from the accuracy of their technical comments etc. (It helped us win the case).

AFAIK the whole idea of the WBM and its ilk is to give access to long gone sites and deleted content from current sites, thus they download and store the files on their own servers. There's not much point in just storing URLs, you can do that in your Bookmarks.

I'd try again, and also look for a few other site options, I have been led to believe that the WBM is not the only resource of that type.

Cheers

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Old 26th Mar 2012, 3:39 pm   #9
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Default Re: Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Billy T View Post
AFAIK the whole idea of the WBM and its ilk is to give access to long gone sites and deleted content from current sites, thus they download and store the files on their own servers. There's not much point in just storing URLs, you can do that in your Bookmarks.
WBM stores web pages. It doesn't have complete coverage anyway and respects bot exclusions. So, it's often useful for static pages but if the page was served by ASP, say, you won't see much and AFAIK, it doesn't store pdfs, just links to them.

Pete.
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Old 20th Apr 2012, 10:03 pm   #10
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Default Re: Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

Perheps is this a alternative.

Henk
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Old 21st Apr 2012, 12:31 am   #11
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Default Re: Bad news re: Philips manuals website.

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Perheps is this a alternative.

Henk


Missing link or reference to Wayback?
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