Service Manual searches? - UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum

Chris55000 · 3rd Aug 2025, 9:05 am

. . .What's happened to a lot of older Test Equipment Manuals?

. . .For some reason, numerous older T & M manuals I KNOW I previously downloaded appear to be disappearing from my phone and email directories, searches for replacement copies are coming up with either nonsense or no results!

. . .Is there some malign commercial policy on the part of Google, copyright moguls/trolls and others to try and delete this information from the public domain and personal devices as well?

Just to quote two of many examples, I used to be able to obtain Parts 1 and 2 of the SE Labs SM111 Oscilloscope Manual without any bother at all, all I get on a recent search now are stupid rotten Toyota car parts or American nonsense results, and there are quite a number of other similar T & M manuals that appear to have disappeared from searches as well – the scans of a Dynamco 7202 Dual Timebase Technical Handbook I got emailed two years ago have disappeared into the wide blue yonder as well!

. . .This is one reason why I maintain Optical Storage devices and media, it's far, far more difficult for malware, commercial paid interests, "ransomware", etc., etc., to deliberately delete a manual burnt to optical disk, the same goes for paper copies, altho' paper manuals can get mislaid easily or damaged by pipe–bursts – a pipe burst at home ruined my paper CDU130 manual some years ago!

Chris Williams

vidjoman · 3rd Aug 2025, 9:50 am

I always download anything I’m interested in and save it to my computer into a manual’s folder and every 6 months or so make a copy of the entire folder onto a USB drive. That way any changes or corruption to an online file won’t affect my copy.

m0cemdave · 3rd Aug 2025, 10:37 am

Two thoughts:

A lot of this information is posted on websites run by individuals, often retired professionals. They won't be there forever. Over time, different ones come and go. Anything on the internet should be treated as ephemeral.

I have noticed that Google searches have changed a lot over the past few years. They used to produce a lot of links to useful or esoteric technical information, some of it quite unexpected. Now it's mainly links to commercial organisations with stuff for sale. I suspect they have changed the algorithms in some way that strongly favours commerce over arts and sciences.

factory · 3rd Aug 2025, 10:39 am

Maybe they were never online and you either had them sent via email in response to a now deleted thread (a lot of information was lost when the wanted section was purged a few years back, prior to the separation of the wanted section), or purchased them from a manuals supplier that has ceased trading.

David

Kentode · 3rd Aug 2025, 11:22 am

I've just been looking for the German version of the Hameg 203-7 oscilloscope manual, which has more info than the English one, and an old link on the forum takes you to the Rohde and Schwarz website. They no longer have the manual available.

Lots of dead links...

factory · 3rd Aug 2025, 11:38 am

Unfortunately Rohde and Schwarz have since decided that only "business customers" can have access to their download area.

Luckily for you the web archive still has some of them;
https://web.archive.org/web/20130124072241/http://www.hameg.com/downloads/man/HM203-7_deutsch.pdf

David

Craig Sawyers · 3rd Aug 2025, 12:07 pm

Indeed. Many of the old experts, suppliers of manuals and parts, have often plain died of old age, or some fell disease. Like Telford Electronics, who had a superb manual service; Mark Christian (a first rate runner too) went from a brain tumour. I think everything went in a skip.

But good remaining places are Tekwiki https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Main_Page which has anything and everything to do with Tektronix. Well worth a browse.

IET - a commercial company who make General Radio gear (at rather eye popping prices) but maintain an GR archive that they were given by the late great Henry Hall https://www.ietlabs.com/genrad/index.html

Another GR archive here https://www.grwiki.org/wiki/Product_Pages

For HP https://hparchive.com/
HP have an archive https://www.hewlettpackardhistory.com/about-the-archives/ , but it is largely company history and photos, some photos of test equipment, but nothing of substance.

Then there are the more generic repositories like

https://bama.edebris.com/
https://www.ko4bb.com/getsimple/index.php?id=manuals

And an excellent US service https://artekmanuals.com/ . The manuals are the highest quality I've seen; 600dpi high resolution colour scans for the schematics. Costs a few dollars each. Used to be run by Dave Henderson, who died suddenly, but it is now run by his wife. Huge manual archive.

Craig

G6Tanuki · 3rd Aug 2025, 12:34 pm

I guess it's all a matter of economics. The number of items of last century test gear like scopes, signal generators, logic analysers and the like that is still in use must be small and getting smaller by the day - keeping a load of hard copy manuals and being able to drag them out to scan, and then having a purchaser moan about having to pay 50p per page, let's face it, it's not going to make you rich so I totally understand how commercial collections of old manuals get dumped.

Same as for manuals for VCRs, CRT tellies etc - in times past large collections of these have been offered FOC to the Forum, on a "you don't get to pick and choose, you take the lot - large van needed, collect by the end of the week" basis and haven't had any takers.

Storage costs money, whether it is physical racks full of paper or a collection of bits on a disc in a data center.

factory · 3rd Aug 2025, 12:58 pm

Well Artekmanuals are still going, 4000+ manuals from Manualsplus got scanned & added to the web archive. There are lots of other smaller archive websites out there too.

The manuals from Telford on the other hand are probably lost, they didn't seen very interested in dealing with them and there was a trader interested in buying them.
Mauitron weren't anything to write home about, lots of unreadable scans.

Stuff made this century often has no service data, not that it needs it as a lot of it is not made to be repaired and goes straight to landfill or WEEE disposal once out of date and/or faulty.

David

Uncle Bulgaria · 3rd Aug 2025, 1:45 pm

It's worth trying other search engines. Personally I avoid Google for its data-scraping, but in general none of them index everything. Try search modifiers and several engines and you may well get lucky.

Many sub-pages are not indexed, or have unoptimised indexing terms, so a search within a website can pick up something that wasn't obvious from a main search engine, or that wasn't crawled in the first place.

Anything you come across online that you want, save and backup yourself. At least a few hard drives take up less room than the equivalent shelves of manuals, and if properly scanned they can be printed for easy reference.

Kentode · 3rd Aug 2025, 3:19 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by factory

Unfortunately Rohde and Schwarz have since decided that only "business customers" can have access to their download area.

Luckily for you the web archive still has some of them;
https://web.archive.org/web/20130124072241/http://www.hameg.com/downloads/man/HM203-7_deutsch.pdf

David

Many thanks David, that's an excellent pdf, unlike so many others...

Julesomega · 3rd Aug 2025, 7:22 pm

Since Datasheetarchive went down last week I've been googling (or dudkduckgoing) for loads of vintage logic devices and got generally good results, either to identify the device function or to download a datasheet. It can be helpful to 'print' to a PDF file, which they already are, but you can select which pages to discard, such as warnings about obsolete status, and detailed drawings of packagaes.

German Dalek · 8th Aug 2025, 7:06 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kentode

I've just been looking for the German version of the Hameg 203-7 oscilloscope manual, which has more info than the English one, and an old link on the forum takes you to the Rohde and Schwarz website. They no longer have the manual available.

Lots of dead links...

Hi Ken,
I 've read about your problem, just asked in Germany and received a quick reply

:
https://www.radio-bastler.de/forum/index.php?thread/28972-hameg-203-7/&postID=315613#post315615

Good luck and happy weekend!

German Dalek

Kentode · 8th Aug 2025, 11:05 am

Many thanks for this, it's an excellent website !

G6ONEDave · 9th Aug 2025, 10:16 am

Always worth posting a request on this forum, as that can get more eyes looking on your behalf and there is the possibility of a forum member having the required info.

Dave

avocollector · 22nd Aug 2025, 1:25 pm

What I find annoying was things like Heathkit manuals were freely available for a long time then some US law firm scenting money tried to get them all removed for copyright infringements. So quite a few vanished. Fortunately I have large paper holdings of a lot of them and others burnt to cd's. They (the US law firms) have been holy terrors in the live music Bluegrass scene as well by sending their people out to check for unauthorised performances in bars etc. It led to the removal of a lot of live music as the bar owners understandably did not want to risk being targeted.

3rd Aug 2025, 9:05 am	#1
Chris55000 Dekatron Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Walsall Wood, Aldridge, Walsall, UK. Posts: 3,635	Service Manual searches? . . .What's happened to a lot of older Test Equipment Manuals? . . .For some reason, numerous older T & M manuals I KNOW I previously downloaded appear to be disappearing from my phone and email directories, searches for replacement copies are coming up with either nonsense or no results! . . .Is there some malign commercial policy on the part of Google, copyright moguls/trolls and others to try and delete this information from the public domain and personal devices as well? Just to quote two of many examples, I used to be able to obtain Parts 1 and 2 of the SE Labs SM111 Oscilloscope Manual without any bother at all, all I get on a recent search now are stupid rotten Toyota car parts or American nonsense results, and there are quite a number of other similar T & M manuals that appear to have disappeared from searches as well – the scans of a Dynamco 7202 Dual Timebase Technical Handbook I got emailed two years ago have disappeared into the wide blue yonder as well! . . .This is one reason why I maintain Optical Storage devices and media, it's far, far more difficult for malware, commercial paid interests, "ransomware", etc., etc., to deliberately delete a manual burnt to optical disk, the same goes for paper copies, altho' paper manuals can get mislaid easily or damaged by pipe–bursts – a pipe burst at home ruined my paper CDU130 manual some years ago! Chris Williams __________________ It's an enigma, that's what it is! This thing's not fixed because it doesn't want to be fixed! Last edited by Chris55000; 3rd Aug 2025 at 9:28 am.

3rd Aug 2025, 9:50 am	#2
vidjoman Dekatron Join Date: Jun 2013 Location: East Sussex, UK. Posts: 3,689	Re: Service Manual searches? I always download anything I’m interested in and save it to my computer into a manual’s folder and every 6 months or so make a copy of the entire folder onto a USB drive. That way any changes or corruption to an online file won’t affect my copy.

3rd Aug 2025, 10:37 am	#3
m0cemdave Octode Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, UK. Posts: 1,457	Re: Service Manual searches? Two thoughts: A lot of this information is posted on websites run by individuals, often retired professionals. They won't be there forever. Over time, different ones come and go. Anything on the internet should be treated as ephemeral. I have noticed that Google searches have changed a lot over the past few years. They used to produce a lot of links to useful or esoteric technical information, some of it quite unexpected. Now it's mainly links to commercial organisations with stuff for sale. I suspect they have changed the algorithms in some way that strongly favours commerce over arts and sciences.

3rd Aug 2025, 10:39 am	#4
factory Nonode Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Cheshire, UK. Posts: 2,343	Re: Service Manual searches? Maybe they were never online and you either had them sent via email in response to a now deleted thread (a lot of information was lost when the wanted section was purged a few years back, prior to the separation of the wanted section), or purchased them from a manuals supplier that has ceased trading. David

3rd Aug 2025, 11:22 am	#5
Kentode Octode Join Date: Mar 2015 Location: Yorkshire, England. Posts: 1,533	Re: Service Manual searches? I've just been looking for the German version of the Hameg 203-7 oscilloscope manual, which has more info than the English one, and an old link on the forum takes you to the Rohde and Schwarz website. They no longer have the manual available. Lots of dead links... __________________ Regards, Ken. BVWS member

3rd Aug 2025, 11:38 am	#6
factory Nonode Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Cheshire, UK. Posts: 2,343	Re: Service Manual searches? Unfortunately Rohde and Schwarz have since decided that only "business customers" can have access to their download area. Luckily for you the web archive still has some of them; https://web.archive.org/web/20130124072241/http://www.hameg.com/downloads/man/HM203-7_deutsch.pdf David

3rd Aug 2025, 12:07 pm	#7
Craig Sawyers Dekatron Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Oxford, UK. Posts: 5,938	Re: Service Manual searches? Indeed. Many of the old experts, suppliers of manuals and parts, have often plain died of old age, or some fell disease. Like Telford Electronics, who had a superb manual service; Mark Christian (a first rate runner too) went from a brain tumour. I think everything went in a skip. But good remaining places are Tekwiki https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Main_Page which has anything and everything to do with Tektronix. Well worth a browse. IET - a commercial company who make General Radio gear (at rather eye popping prices) but maintain an GR archive that they were given by the late great Henry Hall https://www.ietlabs.com/genrad/index.html Another GR archive here https://www.grwiki.org/wiki/Product_Pages For HP https://hparchive.com/ HP have an archive https://www.hewlettpackardhistory.com/about-the-archives/ , but it is largely company history and photos, some photos of test equipment, but nothing of substance. Then there are the more generic repositories like https://bama.edebris.com/ https://www.ko4bb.com/getsimple/index.php?id=manuals And an excellent US service https://artekmanuals.com/ . The manuals are the highest quality I've seen; 600dpi high resolution colour scans for the schematics. Costs a few dollars each. Used to be run by Dave Henderson, who died suddenly, but it is now run by his wife. Huge manual archive. Craig __________________ Doomed for a certain term to walk the night

3rd Aug 2025, 12:34 pm	#8
G6Tanuki Dekatron Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Wiltshire, UK. Posts: 15,846	Re: Service Manual searches? I guess it's all a matter of economics. The number of items of last century test gear like scopes, signal generators, logic analysers and the like that is still in use must be small and getting smaller by the day - keeping a load of hard copy manuals and being able to drag them out to scan, and then having a purchaser moan about having to pay 50p per page, let's face it, it's not going to make you rich so I totally understand how commercial collections of old manuals get dumped. Same as for manuals for VCRs, CRT tellies etc - in times past large collections of these have been offered FOC to the Forum, on a "you don't get to pick and choose, you take the lot - large van needed, collect by the end of the week" basis and haven't had any takers. Storage costs money, whether it is physical racks full of paper or a collection of bits on a disc in a data center. __________________ "Anything Can Happen In The Next Half Hour!" -- Stingray (1965).

3rd Aug 2025, 12:58 pm	#9
factory Nonode Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Cheshire, UK. Posts: 2,343	Re: Service Manual searches? Well Artekmanuals are still going, 4000+ manuals from Manualsplus got scanned & added to the web archive. There are lots of other smaller archive websites out there too. The manuals from Telford on the other hand are probably lost, they didn't seen very interested in dealing with them and there was a trader interested in buying them. Mauitron weren't anything to write home about, lots of unreadable scans. Stuff made this century often has no service data, not that it needs it as a lot of it is not made to be repaired and goes straight to landfill or WEEE disposal once out of date and/or faulty. David

3rd Aug 2025, 1:45 pm	#10
Uncle Bulgaria Dekatron Join Date: May 2016 Location: Cornwall, UK. Posts: 3,051	Re: Service Manual searches? It's worth trying other search engines. Personally I avoid Google for its data-scraping, but in general none of them index everything. Try search modifiers and several engines and you may well get lucky. Many sub-pages are not indexed, or have unoptimised indexing terms, so a search within a website can pick up something that wasn't obvious from a main search engine, or that wasn't crawled in the first place. Anything you come across online that you want, save and backup yourself. At least a few hard drives take up less room than the equivalent shelves of manuals, and if properly scanned they can be printed for easy reference.

3rd Aug 2025, 7:22 pm	#12
Julesomega Dekatron Join Date: Dec 2012 Location: Stockport Heatons, Greater Manchester. Posts: 3,176	Re: Service Manual searches? Since Datasheetarchive went down last week I've been googling (or dudkduckgoing) for loads of vintage logic devices and got generally good results, either to identify the device function or to download a datasheet. It can be helpful to 'print' to a PDF file, which they already are, but you can select which pages to discard, such as warnings about obsolete status, and detailed drawings of packagaes. __________________ - Julian It's good here

8th Aug 2025, 11:05 am	#14
Kentode Octode Join Date: Mar 2015 Location: Yorkshire, England. Posts: 1,533	Re: Service Manual searches? Many thanks for this, it's an excellent website ! __________________ Regards, Ken. BVWS member

9th Aug 2025, 10:16 am	#15
G6ONEDave Nonode Join Date: Dec 2019 Location: Owston Ferry, North Lincolnshire, UK. Posts: 2,092	Re: Service Manual searches? Always worth posting a request on this forum, as that can get more eyes looking on your behalf and there is the possibility of a forum member having the required info. Dave __________________ Quote "All is hyperthetical, until it isn't!" (President Laura Roslin, Battlestar Galactica)

22nd Aug 2025, 1:25 pm	#16
avocollector Heptode Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Wellington, New Zealand. Posts: 677	Re: Service Manual searches? What I find annoying was things like Heathkit manuals were freely available for a long time then some US law firm scenting money tried to get them all removed for copyright infringements. So quite a few vanished. Fortunately I have large paper holdings of a lot of them and others burnt to cd's. They (the US law firms) have been holy terrors in the live music Bluegrass scene as well by sending their people out to check for unauthorised performances in bars etc. It led to the removal of a lot of live music as the bar owners understandably did not want to risk being targeted.