Is ftp.pc.ibm.com offline?

[Robbyrobot]

I recently bought a TP 600X and wanted to get the twbook.pdf file with data sheets on the withdrawn Thinkpads, but find that most places with a link to this file point to ftp.pc.ibm.com. And that appears to be down, as I haven't been able to reach it for 2-3 days with any of my browsers or an independent ftp client.

In fact, I haven't been able to find a source of this file anywhere despite lengthy searches with Google/Yahoo & Co.

It's no problem getting the HMM for this Thinkpad, but for some reason the data sheet collection that covers it appears to be inaccessible.

Does anyone know if the IBM ftp site is still active, or if the contents have been transferred to another site? And can anyone point me to a source of twbook.pdf that is accessible as of now (June 26, 2007)?

Thanks for any help!

[rkawakami]

Try this link:

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pcinstitute/psref/

It appears to be up as of now (0935 June 26 Pacific Time USA).

P.S. Welcome to thinkpads.com! Read the FAQ; this item is covered in #1.

[Robbyrobot]

"ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pcinstitute/psref/
It appears to be up as of now (0935 June 26 Pacific Time USA)"

With Firefox, Opera and the IE: Server does not respond. With a dedicated FTP program the same. I've tried this as well several times over the past few days.

"P.S. Welcome to thinkpads.com! Read the FAQ; this item is covered in #1."

I did already, and the FTP address was unreachable. That's why I wrote here.

HOWEVER... I am in Germany, and since you are in the States and say the site is active, I went to the trouble of changing my IP address to one from the States.

And in fact, that worked, and I was able to download the desired twbook.pdf.

So apparently the site is not reachable if you have an IP address outside the States (or at least a German IP address). Why this should be is a mystery to me, but it's obviously a fact.

[rkawakami]

Interesting... I was not aware that there might be some blocking of file transfers based upon the requestor's IP address. It's possible that IBM/Lenovo is preventing access because of server bandwidth issues (although I don't know if there's other mirror sites located overseas) or other reasons. Maybe somebody with more knowledge about how IBM's FTP system is set up will reply here and we'll both learn more.

[KristianJ]

[quote="Robbyrobot
So apparently the site is not reachable if you have an IP address outside the States (or at least a German IP address). Why this should be is a mystery to me, but it's obviously a fact.[/quote]

Must be a German-based issue - I've been downloading a few of the PDFs and other stuff off the FTP without a hitch from my Aussie part of the world.

[Robbyrobot]

@KristianJ:

"Must be a German-based issue - I've been downloading a few of the PDFs and other stuff off the FTP without a hitch from my Aussie part of the world."

Strange affair... an Austrian friend of mine (in Vienna) wrote me yesterday that this ftp site had been down (unreachable) for quite a while, so I assume he has the same problem as I had.

[richtoy]

Hi

I too cannot access the site. Have been trying all week

$ tracert ftp.software.ibm.com

Tracing route to dispsd-40-www3.boulder.ibm.com [207.25.253.40]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 Destination host unreachable.

Trace complete.

$ ping ftp.software.ibm.com
PING dispsd-40-www3.boulder.ibm.com (207.25.253.40): 56 data bytes

----dispsd-40-www3.boulder.ibm.com PING Statistics----
9 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss

Would some kind person please email me a copy of the books for the 390X & 390E i.e. (tbook & twbook)?

Regards
Richard

address is richard dot toy at gmail dot com

[Robbyrobot]

Just to update my original post, I meanwhile have two workarounds for this problem.

One is to use a different IP number (with Tor), for example one from Israel, China or the USA. This works, but is slow.

The other is very strange, and I have to explain a bit. My Internet provider (ADSL) is the German Telekom, and I use a router for the various locally networked computers to access the Internet. As a rule, I set up my browsers for a direct connection to the Internet - no proxies. And the result is what I originally noted: ftp.software.ibm.com always times out and is thus unavailable. That is still the case even now.

However, if I enter the Telekom proxies in my browser:

HTTP and HTTPS: www-proxy.btx.dtag.de Port 80
FTP: ftp-proxy.btx.dtag.de Port 80

...the ftp site suddenly becomes immediately accessible. In other word, my direct Internet connection cannot access the ftp server, but there are no problems when I use the provider's proxies.

If anyone has an explanation for that, I am all ear. Nobody in the hobby network of which I'm a member (fido) can think of a reason why this should be the case.

At any rate, the workaround is smooth and presents no problems. Crazy world

[31336]

Works for me, and I'm outside the US. Maybe it has something to do with the passive/active mode of your FTP client?

BTW: Did you notice what the message before login says:

1:~$ ftp
ftp> o ftp.pc.ibm.com
Connected to ftp.pc.ibm.com.
220 THIS SERVER WILL BE REMOVED FROM PROUCTION ON 11/01/2005. IF YOU REQUIRE ITS USAGE AFTER 11/01/2005, PLEASE SUBMIT A

[Robbyrobot]

Works for me, and I'm outside the US. Maybe it has something to do with the passive/active mode of your FTP client?

I haven't been able to use the proxies with an FTP client and thus have not been able to connect by this means. Firefox and Opera, with the indicated proxies, connect without problems to the ftp server.

BTW: Did you notice what the message before login says:

As mentioned, no, since I cannot connect at all using an ftp client. But I have no difficulties connecting to the ftp server via the proxy and Firefox or Opera.