Getting Drivers for Old Hardware Is Harder Than Ever (vice.com) 165
At least one major provider of hardware-level BIOS drivers is actively deleting old stuff it no longer supports, while old FTP sites where vintage drivers are often found are soon going to be harder to reach. Ernie Smith, writing for Motherboard: You've never lived until you've had to download a driver from an archived forum post on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. You have no idea if it's going to work, but it's your only option. So you bite the bullet. I recently did this with a PCI-based SATA card I was attempting to flash to support a PowerPC-based Mac, and while it was a bit of a leap of faith, it actually ended up working. Score one for chance. But this, increasingly, feels like it may be a way of life for people trying to keep old hardware alive -- despite the fact that all the drivers generally have to do is simply sit on the internet, available when they're necessary.
Apparently, that isn't easy enough for Intel. Recently, the chipmaker took BIOS drivers, a boot-level firmware technology used for hardware initialization in earlier generations of PCs, for a number of its unsupported motherboards off its website, citing the fact that the programs have reached an "End of Life" status. While it reflects the fact that Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), a later generation of firmware technology used in PCs and Macs, is expected to ultimately replace BIOS entirely, it also leaves lots of users with old gadgets out in a lurch. And as Bleeping Computer has noted, it appears to be part of a broader trend to prevent downloads for unsupported hardware on the Intel website -- things that have long lived past their current lives. After all, if something goes wrong, Intel can be sure it's not liable if a 15-year-old BIOS update borks a system.
Apparently, that isn't easy enough for Intel. Recently, the chipmaker took BIOS drivers, a boot-level firmware technology used for hardware initialization in earlier generations of PCs, for a number of its unsupported motherboards off its website, citing the fact that the programs have reached an "End of Life" status. While it reflects the fact that Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), a later generation of firmware technology used in PCs and Macs, is expected to ultimately replace BIOS entirely, it also leaves lots of users with old gadgets out in a lurch. And as Bleeping Computer has noted, it appears to be part of a broader trend to prevent downloads for unsupported hardware on the Intel website -- things that have long lived past their current lives. After all, if something goes wrong, Intel can be sure it's not liable if a 15-year-old BIOS update borks a system.
Indeed (Score:3)
I miss the times when I just had to shower, put on some clothes and drive to my computer shop, to copy a diskette myself for a fee to get a new driver.
Those were the days.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I miss the days when drivers came on a CD included with the hardware. Now people are expected to download the drivers.
What really steamed me one day was buying a software and hardware bundle only to find out the "software" that came with the hardware was just an installer that downloaded the program from the internet. A download program that didn't work on my newer OS. I ended up having to go through considerable effort to find the correct version of this download program on the web, install *THAT* progr
Re:Indeed (Score:5, Funny)
I miss the days when drivers came on a CD included with the hardware. Now people are expected to download the drivers.
The best part is when those drivers are for the network interface.
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There were IDE CD Writers back in they day which came with their DOS drivers... on a CDROM. You had to find someone with a working unit to copy those drivers to a floppy disk and install your own unit.
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That doesn't even matter really. Doing a Windows 10 upgrade on a Intel motherboard, I discovered a weird UEFI boot bug, and also that for some reason Win10 didn't auto-download some drivers (like the onboard video.) Thanks to Intel removing old drivers and BIOS versions from their website, I resorted to the CDs and found out they BSOD Windows 10. So even having the CD won't save you when in
Re: Indeed (Score:3)
I miss the days when drivers came on a CD included with the hardware.
Erm... no experienced techie worth their salt would agree with you; by the late 90's we'd figured out that it was best to throw those straight in the fucking trash, and get the freshest drivers online.
Come to think of it, we still do.
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That's how I knew it was fiction.
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"That's how I knew it was fiction."
Alas not. And that shop was in a different city on top.
Archive idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone should set up an archive of old software that could be used to prevent this. It could be a non-profit organization made up of volunteers. That way we wouldn't have to write articles complaining about stuff that other people were doing. We could solve the problem ourselves!
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Maybe you should share them online so others can benefit too.
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Usenet.
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Someone should set up an archive of old software that could be used to prevent this. It could be a non-profit organization made up of volunteers. That way we wouldn't have to write articles complaining about stuff that other people were doing. We could solve the problem ourselves!
OK, lets do it.
Re:Archive idea (Score:5, Informative)
OK I just setup a website and added some drivers: https://archive.org/search.php... [archive.org]
Now you add some.
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OK I just setup a website and added some drivers: https://archive.org/search.php... [archive.org]
Now you add some.
Ok , mine are in, this thing is really starting to come along!
Re:Archive idea (Score:5, Funny)
I just sent the author of the article the link, but he said he was too busy writing his next vice.com article and waxing his beard to contribute. Total bummer.
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Thanks guys! nice site.
prefer hardware supported by OpenBSD (Score:3)
Generally speaking, hardware supported by OpenBSD stays supported unless there are very good reasons for removing it.
I run a PCI wifi card under OpenBSD that was stripped from most Linux distributions many years ago. OpenBSD even includes the vendor firmware files that activate the card.
Contrast this to Lubuntu legacy Broadcom support, for an exercise in frustration.
Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
You can guarantee some dorks in legal dept of whatever companies provided the drivers (if they still exist) would threaten copyright infringement even though they no longer make any money from the software. Its exactly what happened with old 8 bit games when people started porting the old ROMs to emulators.
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Yeah, what was I thinking? No website could possibly do it. Derp.
Re:Copyright (Score:4, Informative)
So host it in one of those "not give a shit" countries. The datahoarder people on reddit archived the ftp site as soon as it was announced.
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Good point. I know! Lets write another article and complain about it!
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So provide checksums on the files then like every other site who distributes binaries.
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The major 8-bit games have since been officially ported to newer systems and made money off the ports, thus it is a notable copyright violation to distribute those old roms on emulators.
Of course, there's still plenty of abandonware floating around, but theoretically possible for someone to return with an updated version.
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That's why there needs be a law mandating that electronic software and hardware automatically enter public domain once the manufacturer stops supporting them.
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If you're able to find the old drivers, you'll be tempted to use the old hardware. Which decreases the market for new hardware.
Intel's biggest competitor today is not AMD. It is intel from ten years ago.
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You can guarantee some dorks in legal dept
Doubt it. I bet you it came from a dork in the accoutning department or someone's CI initiative trying to 6-sigma blackbelt bullshit some web developer's time. "You test that change against what part of the Intel website? Why not just delete it all!"
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Yeah, because you'd totally not get sued for illegally distributing their IP. I'd love for such a site to actually exist but without permission it'd be a legal nightmare.
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Well I guess you are in love then: https://archive.org/search.php... [archive.org]
No need to thank me.
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A lot of these companies don't exist any more and it's not clear who owns the IP, much less if they will defend it.
I'd do it and wait for the copyright complaints to arrive, and disable downloads as necessary. Supply a link to the manufacturer's web site and email address that sent the copyright notice too so people can complain when they can't get their drivers.
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Yeah, if only there was a site where you could provide feedback on the downloads. Nah, it will never happen. I guess we are screwed!
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These people are simply pussies. There is no legal issue with hosting copies of drivers. Any lawsuit brought by Intel would be tossed as frivolous and vexatious. Unless of course incompetent lawyers were involved. If you do not understand why this is so then you need to get a wetware upgrade.
Re:Archive idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, no one would dare archive Intel drivers. Damn, I am so stupid. Or are you?
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You would think. But apparently not.
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Yeah, it will never work. What was I thinking? Now, let's get back to complaining about stuff!
LOL (Score:2)
> despite the fact that all the drivers generally have to do is simply sit on the internet, available when they're necessary. ...in a well documented, SEO friendly manner, with a well maintained file system, backups, maintenance, security updates... etc. That "only" has a lot of costs associated with it.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
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For old driver downloads, regular documentation is fine - the name of the device can easily be included in the filename, considering that there's no longer an 8.3 filename limitation.
This bit can be skipped. Only requirement is that the user can find the driver in the archive.
Trivial, old FTP sites from ~1995 already had the concept of mirrors, same as Cygwin and other Linux distributions.
Given that old drivers aren't being upda
Legal fear is probably the real driver (Score:3, Insightful)
"After all, if something goes wrong, Intel can be sure it's not liable if a 15-year-old BIOS update borks a system."
If I were a betting man, I'd guess that this or some other "legal fear" is the real reason for the removal of vendor-supported archives, no matter what ostensible reason the companies claim.
Of course, we will probably never know for sure.
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Half this, half "well, we don't support it anymore, but we'd love to sell you this shiny new piece of hardware."
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I doubt it. If this is a legal issue it would have come up before now, not now that things are beyond end of life. I bet you it's an accounting issue. Someone tarrying to fine tune the last cent of developer time, shutting down an "unneeded" server, or ceasing to maintain an "unneeded" website.
They needed the space (Score:3)
Re: They needed the space (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're joking, but really how hard is it to maintain something that fits on a $5 flash drive?
You tell me. Show me your data that you've kept for 15 years. Show me your multiple backup regimes. Show me your recovery test process and the results of your efforts. Show me your database of files and products. Show me how you've regression tested Intel's website changes against the site that links to these old nugets. Show me your complete test for hardware change. Show me how you ensured that it all survived the many database upgrades that it has had over the years.
Maintaining data is actually hard. Som
A few years ago- (Score:4, Interesting)
around 2016, I decided for fun, to install WinNT 4.0 (plus all available patches and drivers) on an "old" Dell laptop (circa 2009 IIRC) and the biggest challenge was finding said WinNT patches.
Quite a number of links simply pointed back to MS, who of course had expunged all downloads. I had to visit quite a few FTP sites of questionable origin (ending in .RU or .CN) to find the archived files.
Ditto for the drivers. I spent more time tracking down the files, than I did installing/patching the system. While it was a fun project, I was saddened that needed files were getting harder and harder to find. It definitely felt like there was an active attempt to eliminate the computer past.
Re:A few years ago- (Score:5, Interesting)
I feel for the folks who are supporting MRI machines, security systems, sawmills, CNC machines, etc. that only run NT or XP. There just plain **IS** no alternative for them. A utility that I contracted at had a knee-high pile of Compaq 386 laptops sitting in a corner. When I offered to surplus the pile for them they almost had a heart attack and actually put a sign on them saying "Brian-DO NOT TOUCH". They had installed a half-million dollar radio tower in the 1990s with cutting edge capabilities, but the company that wrote the transmitter's software had been purchased by another company which refused to support the hardware. The software would **ONLY** run on DOS 3 on a 386 CPU (and no, no emulation seemed to work).
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Maybe when you buy things you should demand the source code be available. Nah, that won't work. Back to complaining about stuff!
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Yeah, because once they have the source code anyone can write the hardware drivers. /s
I help run the world's largest integrated access/alarm/video system, we're Mercury's single largest hardware customer. We have thousands of programmers on hand, and wanted to write our own security software. Mercury refuses to hand over the drivers and without them we're hosed, fortunately our employer can afford failed projects and it's not considered a mark against the (very talented) TPM who was running the it.
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If it is open source that is useful, because all the libraries are available, and it will likely work with portable compilers. Almost everything still compiles 30 or 40 years later using modern compilers.
With proprietary code, simply having the code may or may not be useful. It probably requires proprietary libraries, they might even only have a binary object file for that part themselves. And it will almost certainly require a specific version of a specific compiler, often one that is no longer in widespre
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Maybe when you buy things you should demand the source code be available. Nah, that won't work. Back to complaining about stuff!
Sure. But what do you do when you go back to the boss and say "sorry our project has failed because every vendor pulled out of the bidding process." ?
'Internet forever' (Score:5, Informative)
Every once in a while when I have a slow day I'll poke my old youtube 'favorites' list. About a quarter of it is gone, but still has enough visible info to see what was there. When I go searching for various videos, they just don't exist anywhere anymore. They were in one place, copyright bots took them down, and no one put in the effort to save them anywhere else.
People sometimes forget that things only 'stay' on the internet if someone is keeping it there, otherwise it will naturally fade and either go missing when some service goes away or get culled when some automated process sweeps it up and no one defends it.
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The thing is, it might still be on the internet, just impossible to find. Without a unique enough name, or something else that brings it up higher in the search listings, you'll never come across it. It's already bad enough that a search for some piece of hardware has 8 pages of ads for places selling something that might be sort of like the old hardware you're looking for. Search engines really turned to shit.
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Even when search engine results are not skewed by commercial interests, they are still popularity-centric, so obscure videos where even the original creator did not fight a DMCA takedown might be stored somewhere but are not talked about enough to show up in search engine results.
Time for a new Internet (Score:2)
Indeed. This is one of the problems that IPFS [ipfs.io] is aiming to solve.
Author's Tech Credentials Revoked (Score:2)
I Thought Ahead... (Score:3)
And saved all my old hardware driver install Disks (remember those?) and CD (Compact Discs in case you've forgotten). It's going to be a real bummer for all that hardware that was serviced by internet downloads as those companies and sites fade away.
Those of you who grew up with the "always on" internet are going to be learning a valuable lesson soon. ;)
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Not long ago I wanted to reinstall an older piece of software that I occasionally use, and then realized that I no longer have a drive capable of reading a CD. (I still have a floppy drive squirreled away, but no tower to plug it into any more. Maybe it's time to do some housecleaning . . .)
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"Never insert a driver disk. Never." --me
I'm assuming you're on windows. There is almost always a better driver available to download than the one on the driver disk, and even if that is the best one, that's the same one you'll download.
Just save the installers.
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I guess you have never have a disk or CD go bad on you. Disks are worse, but CDs also degrade over time.
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Hope you archived the drives to read the driver install disks and CDs, and the computer that can run those devices, and the OS that runs on that computer. Otherwise you are wasting your time.
Car thread! (Score:3)
dammit I was hoping I would get to drive an oldtimer and it is just about stupid computers!
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Oracle... (Score:3)
Such as 4 port NICs that do not use an Intel chipset. There are 64bit drivers for them so they work with modern OSes, but you have to pay to get them.
Drivers for Old Hardware (Score:2)
Hard to find cuz kids these days. Nobody learns how to drive a stick or read a map. anymore.
If GPS were to go down no one under 40 would ever find their way back home
Back in my day.....
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You laugh now... you just wait... ;)
Re: Drivers for Old Hardware (Score:2)
Re: Drivers for Old Hardware (Score:2)
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I wonder if people from my generation even know how to orient a map with a compass.
I wonder if they know how to orient a map with the sun.
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I wonder if people from my generation even know how to orient a map with a compass.
I wonder if they know how to orient a map with the sun.
I wonder if they know what a map is.
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Ye olde sundial will give you an approximate movement of direction for the sun even on a cloudy day as long as the overcast isn't "oh shit it looks like night." You don't need hours, 10-15 minutes tops.
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More options (Score:2)
You've never lived until you've had to download a driver from an archived forum post on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. You have no idea if it's going to work, but it's your only option.
Or you could write the driver yourself.
Put out the source on Github (Score:4, Interesting)
Intel is pulling a dick move. They should just release the source on Github or something and call it a day. They can delete their stuff witout screwing over all the Grandpas with vintage machines.
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How about the Oregon sawmill that runs on NT? Or the AMAG security systems that won't run on anything but Win 95? Or the thousands of MRI machines that require Win 2K or XP? When you spend $50,000-$2,000,000 on hardware you really don't have any choice about supporting the software that runs it.
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If you're using something that old, you shouldn't have it connected to the internet.
And you have to either maintain backups, or buy new equipment. That was known already decades ago when it was already outdated.
It is not inconceivable that idiotic management of a business could result in the loss of $50,000-$2,000,000. And I could easily add, or more.
This is devestating news! (Score:2)
News flash...Supporting old hardware is not profitable so unless dropping support will irreparably damage the brand it is expedient to keep the shareholders happy.
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Then they should make it profitable.
There's plenty of old medical equipment - both esoteric and expensive at the same time. They still need a computer running Windows XP or earlier, because the device manufacturer hasn't bothered to write drivers for later operating systems. Easy profit, especially in the already profit-driven health care system in a certain country.
Also, they just need to make sure it's functional, not support users that are still trying to use old
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How will I reinstall the drivers for my 4MB MFM HDD on my 386?
Back up your system to floppy and create boot/restore floppies BEFORE you need to reinstall them. Oh, you didn't do that or you are restoring a device and don't have anything more than the original OS install media? Well, it will take time and it may not be possible.
If you are running a 4MB machine, you are probably running Windows 98, 95, NT less than 4, OS/2 less than 3, DOS, or a non-MS OS. I think you can find full install media for the MS operating systems and early Linux OSes online, but maybe only
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How will I reinstall the drivers for my 4MB MFM HDD on my 386?
You don't install drivers for it. All the work is done by the 8 bit ISA or 16 bit EISA hardware controller. As long as the controller works with DOS, then no problem.
The complexity of the controller is most of the reason that competitors switched to ATA. They make the controller much simpler, moving a lot of the work to software.
And you don't usually need drivers for ATA either, outside of generic operating system support.
That is what out of support means (Score:2)
If you plan to continue to use hardware or software beyond its supported date, it is really upto you to keep the copies of the drivers.
Yo ho ho (Score:2)
Better title ... (Score:3)
Finding Drivers for Miss Daisy Wheel
Miss Daisy Wheel (Score:2)
Pun aside, that may be easier than you think, since many - not all but many - of those daisy wheel printers worked fine as "plain ascii printers" usually over a standard serial or parallel port, particularly if you set them in a monospaced mode with a particular number of characters-per-inch and rows-per-inch and didn't need features like bold (usually implemented by a slightly-offset double-strike) or underline (usually implemented by backspace-and-underline), subscripts, or superscripts (both usually impl
It gets worse over time. (Score:2)
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You should be able to access the files to copy them to a USB drive.
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Landfill lament (Score:2)
I know people who abandoned perfectly good printers and scanners because they couldn't get working drivers for them on newer OS's. It's a shame.
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Yeah someone should do something about it. Any ideas?
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HP, after Carly Fiorina came on board I bet. My employer at the time had to do the same.
Re:Landfill lament (Score:4, Interesting)
I know people who abandoned perfectly good printers and scanners because they couldn't get working drivers for them on newer OS's. It's a shame.
It happened to me. Several times.
What I'm seeing is a kind of "memory hole" where the really early printers (and other hardware too) keeps working because it is simple and common enough for people to keep writing drivers as new operating systems come out. The stuff that came later came in so many different versions, had offloaded a lot of the logic to the drivers, and so was so complex and worthless hardware that no one wanted to write drivers. The printers that we see today have web servers built into them and so much other ease of use features, and support a wide variety of well documented protocols, that I expect people will keep using these things for much longer. If someone wants to use these things with a new OS then they can usually put the printer into some emulation mode, or set it up as some kind of internet protocol server, that getting it to print something is near trivial. Future users might not get all the features working but the basic functions will be there and still operational.
I have seen laser printers that are decades old that keep going. Those of a "middle age" are just junk for a lack of drivers. The new printers are more like those far older models in their supported protocols and interfaces.
OUTTATIME (Score:2)
What if it gets so bad that somebody has to invent a time machine to get technical support?
(Insert link to the John Titor story here...)
Sigh... (Score:2)
You've never lived until you've had to download a driver from an archived forum post on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. You have no idea if it's going to work, but it's your only option. So you bite the bullet.
How far we've fallen...
Time to post checksums (Score:2)
Maybe it's past time to go through all software, proprietary or not, and post hashes or checksums of every file including every "file" in every archive-file, and publish them widely. Collections of these can in turn have their hashes published in forms "guaranteed" to live for decades, such as being published in printed newspaper paid advertisement or put on file in government copyright offices or other long-term repositories.
This way, 20 years from now when someone is trying to find that driver for the 20
Re: Platform OS too (Score:2)
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The answer to your question is yes they do. It's vice after all, don't let him near the old motherboards that use dip switches.