Finding, collecting, and restoring vintage tech is the rewarding pastime of many a Hackaday reader. Working with old-school gear can be tough, though, when documentation or supporting resources are hard to find. If you’re in need of an old manual or a little scrap of software, you might find the Vintage Technology Digital Archive (VTDA) a useful destination.
The VTDA is a simple website. There is no search function, or fancy graphical way to browse the resources on offer. Instead, it’s merely a collection of files in a well-ordered directory tree. Click through /pics/DiskSleeves/VTDA/ and you’ll find a collection of high-resolution scans of various old diskettes and their packaging. /docs/computing/Centronics/ will give you all kinds of useful documentation, from press releases to datasheets for printers long forgotten. You can even find Heathkit schematics and old Windows bootdisk images if you dive into the depths.
While it doesn’t have everything, by any means, the VTDA has lots of interesting little bits and pieces that you might not find anywhere else. It’s a great counterpart to other archival efforts out on the web, particularly if you’re a member of the retrocomputing massive.
Thanks to [Itay] for the tip!
haha wild – i randomly wound up looking at a Sams service manual for the ibm 5150, and i just stumbled onto information i was actively seeking 24 years ago when someone asked me to try to recover data on his old PC. a lot more detail than i expected, from an era where people would troubleshoot components and sub-assemblies instead of replacing.
a little late, but still a trip
Sites like this bring me back to the early days of the internet when it was primarly a treasure trove of obscure information.
I miss them. Many are gone, many are archived and some are still on-line.
The search engine wiby.me can be used to find traditional websites.
Some are old, some are still being updated, some are new.
I miss that era. Back when you could actually find useful information without it being behind a paywall, a “free subscription required,” or similar. And way back when… just a few years ago… when you did not have to wonder if what you were reading was some LLM’s hallucination (Looking at you three, Bing, Google, and Apple.)
“There is no search function”
Just put “site:https://vtda.org/docs” + whatever you want to query for, in google.com (or other search engines). While not a builtin website search function, it is sometimes more effective results.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fvtda.org%2Fdocs
I meant to add: vtda.org is super cool.
s/random/pseudo random/g ftfy 😜