ThinkPad Drivers Snapshot: just in case Lenovo deletes them

[Norway Pad]

Thanks guys, works like a charm. I mounted an external USB drive and navigated the whole thing there. So the T30 is running full throttle now, we'll see how far he makes it tonight. wget was a very useful tool for this, glad I have taken a slight step into the Linux world.

Edit: Download is done, 55.0GB. Lots of files, but luckily the actual html file that shows the driver matrix for each machine seems to be there. So this is great to keep when this site sometimes disappear.

[pkiff]

Started browsing through these files tonight to see how they are organized and what is there. I was wondering how they added up to 55GB - that seems like a lot, even for a full collection of Thinkpad drivers. One thing I discovered is that there are about 38GB that are taken up by Rescue and Recovery software files. Every version in every language is over 200MB, and when you add up all the versions in all the languages you end up with some 38GB.

[BillMorrow]

its late for me, here now, just catching up while uploading the above mentioned files to thinkpads.com as a mirror or archive or whatever.. which has been going on for 36 hours so far..
so I have not read all the above posts..

so, when I get through all these will be available at thinkpads.com for members only or maybe anyone..
have not decided which.. yet..
meanwhile perhaps grabbing the hardware maintenance manuals and hosting them at thinkpads.com might be a good idea..?

I await suggestions and remarks..

[RealBlackStuff]

Already working on the HMM download.

[Medessec]

Would love to see the files uploaded to the forum for use of Thinkpad enthusiasts from all around - however...

A public repository of all the drivers, especially with the amount of data (55GB) would mean a LOT of traffic. Members only would be easier on the bandwidth, but would seem unfair to other Thinkpad enthusiasts.

I'm not sure what the situation is there - so that's up to the SysAdmin and the guys who DO know.

But I would love for there to be a sub-page or something... forum.thinkpads.com/drivers...?

[Norway Pad]

I would see this as a members only service, as that might free us from obligations and potential bandwidth issues. Most enthusiasts are members here anyway, and I don't know what obligations or issues might come with providing something like this for the public - fully open and searchable.

[ajkula66]

I would see this as a members only service, as that might free us from obligations and potential bandwidth issues.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Most enthusiasts are members here anyway, and I don't know what obligations or issues might come with providing something like this for the public - fully open and searchable.

Hate to be a pessimist like usual, but I could see Lenovo barking at links to what is their proprietary material one way or another. Let's hope that I'm wrong...

[dsvochak]

So long as becoming a member is trivially easy, restricting access to members only isn’t likely to have any impact on bandwidth concerns. The issue George raised regarding "Lenovo barking" could be more problematic.

While the files, or data contained therein, may belong to Lenovo, they aren’t useful to everyone. The drivers are only useful to someone who has a particular model. HMM’s and the like are only useful to someone repairing/replacing a particular model.

While the fair use doctrine ( http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html ) might offer some protection, defending a claim by Lenovo would likely be cost prohibitive.

Let’s hope Lenovo won’t be jerks about this.

[Saucey]

Thank you seeders!
Got all the files downloaded, will just need to copy them and use one of the X61 halftops I got.
Hopefully Wednesday I'll have a machine running almost 24/7 seeding, I'll see about its power draw.

[Johan]

First, thank you very much to all members, moderators and admins here at forum.thinkpads.com who have contributed to downloading and making available at forum.thinkpads.com the "legacy" ThinkPad drivers. It seems to have been more or less in the last moment, because as it clearly says on the Lenovo Support Express site: This site is no longer being maintained by Lenovo Support Team as of August 10th, 2014 and will be discontinued on October 31st, 2014. In my translation "discontinued" means: Will entirely disappear and then be gone forever!

Next, and kind of urgent: When people ask for help on this forum it is often very useful to have access to e.g. the various Parts Lists for whatever ThinkPad being the subject. While the HMM's contain the complete Parts List, these parts lists (in the HMM's) are dating back to close to the time the particular ThinkPad was released... as far as I know PDF HMM's are typically not being continuously updated with all new information about Parts Lists. Consider e.g. large number of various substitute motherboards only for the T4x/R5x generation ThinkPad's (see The Board Room: Overview of known Motherboards for T4x/R5x... only a fraction of these are listed in the printed HMM's. Many of the newer, replacement boards are however found on the updated (previously IBM, now Lenovo) online Parts List Index; such as e.g. System service parts - ThinkPad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p (see the many occurrences of part "xxxxxxx" being replaces "yyyyyyyyyy"). For many "legacy" ThinkPad's (e.g. the T4x/P series) a number of parts list exist:

Code: Select all

- System service parts
- 14.1" LCD service parts
- 15" LCD service parts
- Common service parts
- Keyboard service parts
- Miscellaneous service parts
- T40 system Recovery CD service parts
- T41 system Recovery CD service parts
- T42 system Recovery CD service parts

The purpose of this post is hence to ask if anybody has already, or if not: Would be willing to, download all these ("legacy") ThinkPad Parts List (etc.) files, and make them publicly available, like what has already been done for the drivers? Recall that these files are announced to be completely and permanently removed from Lenovo’s, in just 13 days from now! It seems that Lenovo has unfortunately already removed the common interface (index) to the legacy ThinkPad Parts index, but I have found a link which still is alive, at this time of writing (although it points to Lenovo-files which can be gone any time now); see Service parts list index - ThinkPad. I believe if would be VERY, VERY useful for forum.thinkpads.com to host all these various parts lists, and I also believe that their accumulated size (disk space requirement) would be quite modest; these parts lists all being HTML-files.

The various instructional ThinkPad videos, which I have found on this link, would also be very, very useful to have available (after no longer being available from Lenovo), but these vidoe's will obviously be taking up a bit more diskspace, compared to HTML-files...

There might very well be even more useful documents, files etc, worth downloading, some of which can be found via either Direct links to important functions on the Lenovo esupport site or perhaps Accessing documents from Lenovo's new Support site but I'm not sure how to get an overwiev of what's there, and what's useful, and how to grab it?

I assume that the "wget" program/command as discussed previously in this thread may be used for downloading the HTML Parts Lists (etc.), but I'm only an amateur when it comes to "wget" so I'd greatly appreciate all comments and suggestions as how to secure the Parts Lists etc. as well, now before it's too late!!

Thanks very much in advance to each and any for all suggestions and all help to also secure (and no or later) make available also the Parts Lists etc., as mentioned above.

Johan

[twistero]

I believe we can all agree on the importance of preserving legacy ThinkPad drivers and HMMs.

As for the parts list mentioned by Johan:

Next, and kind of urgent: When people ask for help on this forum it is often very useful to have access to e.g. the various Parts Lists for whatever ThinkPad being the subject. While the HMM's contain the complete Parts List, these parts lists (in the HMM's) are dating back to close to the time the particular ThinkPad was released... as far as I know PDF HMM's are typically not being continuously updated with all new information about Parts Lists. Consider e.g. large number of various substitute motherboards only for the T4x/R5x generation ThinkPad's (see The Board Room: Overview of known Motherboards for T4x/R5x... only a fraction of these are listed in the printed HMM's. Many of the newer, replacement boards are however found on the updated (previously IBM, now Lenovo) online Parts List Index; such as e.g. System service parts - ThinkPad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p (see the many occurrences of part "xxxxxxx" being replaces "yyyyyyyyyy").

I had a quick look over the T4[0-2] pages, and it seems like their HMM lists the newest part numbers ("xxxxxxx"), while the webpages lists both new and old ones ("xxxxxxx" replaces "yyyyyyy"). Are they all like this? How important do people think it is to preserve these part list webpages?

What other assets do people want to preserve?

BTW, looks like http://206.17.82.1/en_US/ is a fully functional copy of the traditional Lenovo support site. Cherish it while it lasts.

[dr_st]

BTW, looks like http://206.17.82.1/en_US/ is a fully functional copy of the traditional Lenovo support site. Cherish it while it lasts.

This is what support1.lenovo.com points to.

[pkiff]

What other assets do people want to preserve?

I think it would be nice to preserve the possibility of doing a quick look-up for specifications of legacy machines using only the Machine-Type Model. I've already got a python script almost ready that will help do this, and I started gathering volunteers here: Preserving Type-Model Details: Request for Python Volunteers

I got a couple volunteers but then got stalled, but hope to get it going again this week, and will be looking for additional volunteers when it is ready to go.

Phil.

[twistero]

think it would be nice to preserve the possibility of doing a quick look-up for specifications of legacy machines using only the Machine-Type Model. I've already got a python script almost ready that will help do this, and I started gathering volunteers here: Preserving Type-Model Details: Request for Python Volunteers

I got a couple volunteers but then got stalled, but hope to get it going again this week, and will be looking for additional volunteers when it is ready to go.

Phil.

Interesting. So your scraper simply brute forces through [0-9]{4}[0-9a-z]{3}? That's going to take a while indeed.

Just now I tried to find a way to at least crawl through the selector. They use some AJAX dark magic to retrieve the category lists like this:

Code: Select all

http://support1.lenovo.com/en_US/landing/1346836824018.ajax?_=1414093391956&method=getSeries&productSelection=P014----
http://support1.lenovo.com/en_US/landing/1346836824018.ajax?_=1414093414191&method=getSubseries&productSelection=P014-S011---
http://support1.lenovo.com/en_US/landing/1346836824018.ajax?_=1414093440903&method=getMachineTypes&productSelection=P014-S011-SS0093--
http://support1.lenovo.com/en_US/landing/1346836824018.ajax?_=1414093472159&method=getModels&productSelection=P014-S011-SS0093-MT0713-
http://support1.lenovo.com/en_US/landing/1346836824018.ajax?_=1414093499929&method=getOSs&productSelection=P014-S011-SS0093-MT0713-MD239919+++

Each step the response is XML, and the list of options is under Properties/Data/Result/ProductSelectorResult/Options. Finally clicking on "Submit" navigates to

Code: Select all

http://support1.lenovo.com/en_US/landing.page?submit=true&componentID=1346836824018&iwPreActions=SetProduct&prodId=P014-S011-SS0093-MT0713-MD239919%20%20%20&os=

Where a cookie is set:

Code: Select all

SelectedProduct:	P014-S011-SS0093-MT0713-MD239919|null

The browser gets 302 redirected promptly, and the specs are displayed.

Any XML responses from the .ajax location afterwards also includes specs for the selected system at Properties/Data/Result/SelectedProduct:

Code: Select all

<SelectedProduct>
    <CategoryID>P014</CategoryID>
    <SeriesID>S011</SeriesID>
    <SubseriesID>SS0093</SubseriesID>
    <MachineTypeID>MT0713</MachineTypeID>
    <ModelID>MD239919</ModelID>
    <OS />
    <ProductID>P014-S011-SS0093-MT0713-MD239919</ProductID>
    <ProductName>ThinkPad X60 Tablet (6366-9AF)</ProductName>
    <ProductDescription>L2500(1.83GHz), 2GB RAM, 1200GB HD, 12.1in 1024x768 LCD Touchscreen, Intel 950, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Telus WWAN, Bluetooth, Modem, 1Gb Ether, Sec Chip, IEEE 1394,  X6 Ultrabase + CDRW/DVDRW, FPR, 8c Li-Ion, WinXP Tablet 2005</ProductDescription>
    <OSName />
</SelectedProduct>

This seems fairly crawlable. I don't have the time right now, but hopefully this is useful for someone else to build a crawler.

[pkiff]

Interesting. So your scraper simply brute forces through [0-9]{4}[0-9a-z]{3}? That's going to take a while indeed.

!! Yes, I know!

Just now I tried to find a way to at least crawl through the selector. They use some AJAX dark magic to retrieve the category lists like this [...]

I started looking into the using the selectors, but soon realized that the available selectors don't actually include all the Machine Type + Model numbers that are in the database they are drawing from. That's why I ended up with a brute force approach.

This seems fairly crawlable. I don't have the time right now, but hopefully this is useful for someone else to build a crawler.

Thanks for breaking down the process in more detail. I expect your crawling skills and strategies would be an improvement over mine. I intend to post the script on github soon, and maybe you can provide some advice on improving it there.

Phil.

[RealBlackStuff]

Unless Lenovo changes its (lack of) mind, you only have 7 more days to do the job...
Sorry, can't help you here.

[pkiff]

Unless Lenovo changes its (lack of) mind, you only have 7 more days to do the job...
Sorry, can't help you here.

My understanding is that the Express site: http://download.lenovo.com/express/ is scheduled to disappear in 7 days, but the data I'm talking about is being scraped from the support1.lenovo.com site, which does not have the same end-of-life notice: http://support1.lenovo.com/

I'm hopeful that the support1.lenovo.com site will stay up for a while yet.

[twistero]

I started looking into the using the selectors, but soon realized that the available selectors don't actually include all the Machine Type + Model numbers that are in the database they are drawing from. That's why I ended up with a brute force approach.

Could you provide some examples of MTMs that are not in the selector? There could be some kind of pattern behind them.

Also, the backend of "Quick path" MTM searches is this:

Code: Select all

http://support1.lenovo.com/en_US/landing/1346836824018.ajax?method=getQuickPath&QuickPathSearch=6363p3u

which returns

Code: Select all

<ProductSelectorResults>
    <QuickPathResult>
        <Product>
            <Name>ThinkPad X60 Tablet (6363-P3U)</Name>
            <productId>P014-S011-SS0093-MT0118-MD239279</productId>
        </Product>
    </QuickPathResult>
</ProductSelectorResults>

This might be faster than loading an HTML page, waiting for all the JavaScript to execute, and then parsing the result.

[pkiff]

Could you provide some examples of MTMs that are not in the selector? There could be some kind of pattern behind them.

Mmmmm....it looks like I was wrong about this. I scraped three machine types during testing (2007, 2008, 2009 - all are T60 or T60p models), and I compared my results against those extracted by another scraper mentioned on a German thinkpad site (http://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/178429 ... ost1798388). And my brute force scraping pulled many more results for the same machine type compared to theirs, which was based on the selector. So I figured the selector was missing some. But on closer examination, I see that mine all do in fact seem to be listed in the selector. I guess that earlier scraper was just not extracting the models from the selector properly - or when it was done the database didn't hold as many models.

Regardless, I think it may be worth looking at the selector as you suggest.

[twistero]

Alright, that wasn't too bad. I've started scraping the selector for everything under "Laptops & Tablets" that has the word "ThinkPad" in it. Hopefully I have enough error handling in there so one random error does not stop the whole thing.

Python script here for the curious: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B08nIG ... sp=sharing

[twistero]

Back on the issue of driver files.

Right now I am not seeding the torrent posted in the OP. All contents in that torrent can be found here on this forum, behind the "Drivers & HMMs" link in the header.

Separately, I again downloaded driver files from Lenovo's express support site, this time including ALL ThinkPad models. The drivers + HMM totals 181GB.

[rkawakami]

I've downloaded all files offered for older ThinkPads...<snip>...The files add up to 55GB of data, and here's a torrent for them all:

Got a copy of all .exe and .txt files from this index...<snip>...Downloaded: 985 files, 523M

... Aaaaand I've already downloaded everything again from Lenovo's servers

This worked well for me, though it took more than 24 hours to download the 55GB.

but the data I'm talking about is being scraped from the support1.lenovo.com site,

Separately, I again downloaded driver files from Lenovo's express support site, this time including ALL ThinkPad models. The drivers + HMM totals 181GB.

You think the IT people at Lenovo are scratching their heads wondering why the traffic to their server(s) has suddenly jumped ?

[JaneL]

LOL

[twistero]

You think the IT people at Lenovo are scratching their heads wondering why the traffic to their server(s) has suddenly jumped ?

Pfft, less than a TB of traffic? Not even a blip on the radar.

Amazon S3, a hosting service for static content, sells data transfer to the internet for $0.120 per GB (and cheaper for higher volumes). The file downloads basically cost nothing for Lenovo.

[pkiff]

You think the IT people at Lenovo are scratching their heads wondering why the traffic to their server(s) has suddenly jumped ?

Pfft, less than a TB of traffic? Not even a blip on the radar.

At one point, I thought about hiding the fact that I was trying to scrape data from their server, but then I realized that Lenovo should be happy that we are trying to do this in an organized way and then sharing the files rather than having every single separate support group or individual trying to download their own set of 1TB worth of files in a haphazard way. At least this way, Lenovo can figure out what is going on if they bother to care.

[twistero]

The scraping of the selector is almost done. I'm getting some persistent errors, though, so could someone try the following:

On the classic Lenovo support site, using the "choose from the options below" selector, try navigating from "Laptops & Tablets" to these models:

Code: Select all

'ThinkPad T Series laptops', 'ThinkPad T440', '20B7'
'ThinkPad T Series laptops', 'ThinkPad T440p', '20AW'
'ThinkPad T Series laptops', 'ThinkPad T440s', '20AR'
'ThinkPad X Series laptops', 'ThinkPad X230', '2325'
'ThinkPad X Series laptops', 'ThinkPad X240', '20AM'

Can you actually expand the next level? If I try clicking on these models, the wheel just keeps spinning and eventually disappears. The scraper reports "504 Gateway Time Out".

At one point, I thought about hiding the fact that I was trying to scrape data from their server, but then I realized that Lenovo should be happy that we are trying to do this in an organized way and then sharing the files rather than having every single separate support group or individual trying to download their own set of 1TB worth of files in a haphazard way. At least this way, Lenovo can figure out what is going on if they bother to care.

If they bother to care indeed.

[RealBlackStuff]

In Both IE 11 and PaleMoon 24.6.2 the wheel just keeps spinning for all of them.

[thomase13]

Hi everyone,

I haven't been here in a while, so I was naturally shocked to hear this news, although it shouldn't surprise me, Lenovo being Lenovo.
I'm so glad to see all the resources now hosted here. It's surprising to me that my dear T60p is considered a "legacy machine", considering it's actually made by Lenovo. I never thought anything post-IBM would be considered "legacy", but I guess it is 2014!

Anyway, what worries me is about everything else not ThinkPad-related that will likely be lost.
There are the P/S Reference books going back to 1987, and there are the Hardware Maintenance Manuals for lots of things, which are still on their servers, but I can't find a link to.

I'm in the middle of completely upgrading an IBM NetVista Desktop (Type 6792, which is circa 2002), and while I do have the HMM, PSR and User Guide, things would have been much more difficult for me had I not been able to access this information online!

I completely realize that this is beyond the scope of what the ThinkPad forum would host, since it's not ThinkPad related, but it still is an awful shame that these things will be lost for the IBMers of the future!
Does anyone have an idea of how some of these things could be preserved? If torrenting looks like the best way, I would certainly be willing to run a server!

Also, for my personal use, it would be nice to have the relevant materials to the machines that I own. I can get all of the PDFs, but how would I download the movies?
Some of the movies seem to be gone already. Some of the things in the movies are described and depicted in my on-system help, but others aren't (like installing a backup battery).
It would be awfully nice to have these videos, but I don't know how much trouble it would be.

Thanks again for all your efforts!

[twistero]

I haven't been here in a while, so I was naturally shocked to hear this news, although it shouldn't surprise me, Lenovo being Lenovo.

<snipped>

Thanks again for all your efforts!

PSREF is on Lenovo's new support site: http://www.lenovo.com/psref/psrefs_withdrawn.shtml so that's probably going to be around for some time.

As for other things, download them while you still can from these two sites http://download.lenovo.com/express and http://support1.lenovo.com

[Johan]

Anyway, what worries me is about everything else not ThinkPad-related that will likely be lost. There are the P/S Reference books going back to 1987, and there are the Hardware Maintenance Manuals for lots of things, which are still on their servers, but I can't find a link to.

...

Does anyone have an idea of how some of these things could be preserved? If torrenting looks like the best way, I would certainly be willing to run a server!

Also, for my personal use, it would be nice to have the relevant materials to the machines that I own. I can get all of the PDFs, but how would I download the movies? Some of the movies seem to be gone already. Some of the things in the movies are described and depicted in my on-system help, but others aren't (like installing a backup battery). It would be awfully nice to have these videos, but I don't know how much trouble it would be.

First: All the HMM's have already been secured, and are now being hosted by this wonderful forum! You will find a link at the top of this page: The thinkpads support forum is now hosting legacy model ThinkPad driver and driver updates. A link is provided in the MENUBAR just above for registered forum members only.

Next: I'd suggest you see this post (in this thread, above!) where you will find still-working links to all of the movies. If you are really serious about getting (and even potentially also hosting?) the video's, then I think it would be a great and valuable thing. However, in such case, I'd strongly suggest NOT to hesitate; get your download going NOW - before it's soon too late (!!).

To repeat myself (from the above post):

The various instructional ThinkPad videos, which I have found on this link, would also be very, very useful to have available (after no longer being available from Lenovo), but these video's will obviously be taking up a bit more diskspace, compared to HTML-files...

Then, how to download these video'es? Go play with "wget32" - see e.g. this post for a suggestion (provided by twistero at the end of the post).

Again, and to emphasize: If you are really serious about grabbing these video'es, then NOW is the time to move - especially taking into consideration what you'll read on the Lenovo Support Express site: This site is no longer being maintained by Lenovo Support Team as of August 10th, 2014 and will be discontinued on October 31st, 2014

Johan