Schematic Heaven site says Going Down end of this month

[Phil_S]

There seems to be conflicting information. This exactly what I see, about 9:25am eastern time today:

http://www.webphix.com/schematic%20heav ... _HTML.html
THIS SITE IS GOING AWAY! Take what you can get, as everything will be removed very soon (end of March, 2014).

Sad news. It will be impossible to d/l the whole site and a great deal of it can be found elsewhere. Somehow, this seems to be the most successful site of its type and is a victim of its own success. I wonder if the owner of the site has a way to archive it so that maybe someone else can step up and repost the content.

Very odd.
When I open the site through Firefox, the "Going Away" banner is not there.
Only when I open it through IE.

I just tried it with Firefox and the Going Away banner is there. Maybe you are seeing a cached web page in IE?

I'm using Firefox. I see the message I posted above. It was a cut and paste job.

[Teleguy61]

My browser was displaying a cached page.
When refreshed, it shows the bad news.

[caphead]

I far as I know, the original schematic heaven site has been down for a few years, webphix (or the way-back machine) is of itself a mirror/archive site. What I can't understand is why an archived website is getting closed down, is it the powers that be of the internet just figured out this popular site is existing without anyone actually paying for it? My typical conspiracy minded thought process is suspecting some funny business about all this though. Think about it; schematic heaven is perhaps the most extensive single resource for this type of information, and it is all free. Who would stand to gain if it were to go away? I'm not entirely sure who would specifically but I have a few ideas....

[Trout]

I posted this elsewhere, but its a short & easy download.

You can still download the entire site + schematics and store it on disk. It fit on a pen drive

Its a total of 648 MB which includes all graphics, layouts & schematic PDF files.
Took me about 12 minutes using web2disk
http://www.inspyder.com/products/Web2Di ... bsite.aspx

Once downloaded you can even open it in a browser just like being at the site or just open the pdf file you need.

[rp]

besides those apps mentioned there's the <DownThemAll!> addon for FF that'll make quick work of it. I'll let you figure it out but it's intuitive enough ( right click - select all - check all - etc.) I was hoping it'd grab them ALL off the home page links but I had to go to each brands page (Fender, Marshal etc) and do it that way. Better make yourself a list of labeled folders first to send them to to avoid the fell down the stairs with a giant box of schematics jumble.

I thought SH had been gone for years. But thanks for the impetus to do this, never know if Hoffman etc will always be around.

[Trout]

besides those apps mentioned there's the <DownThemAll!> addon for FF that'll make quick work of it. I'll let you figure it out but it's intuitive enough ( right click - select all - check all - etc.) I was hoping it'd grab them ALL off the home page links but I had to go to each brands page (Fender, Marshal etc) and do it that way. Better make yourself a list of labeled folders first to send them to to avoid the fell down the stairs with a giant box of schematics jumble.

I thought SH had been gone for years. But thanks for the impetus to do this, never know if Hoffman etc will always be around.

The app I posted grabs the pages intact, all links & all the files associated with the links in a matter of minutes.

You can then open it in IE or FF just like a regular web page, each link will still be intact but it directs itself to the location you store the grab.

Or, you can open the individual PDF files since the file names downloaded with everything else.
I'll check into the FF ad-on though.
That entire site is really small as I mentioned above, less space that a couple hi-def pictures.

[Trout]

ooops

[Phil_S]

I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I mirrored the entire site to my hard drive. Now what? I have no idea!

My copy came in at 651MB, 1960 files, 32 folders. I believe this will fit on a single DVD...maybe a file or two needs to be omitted and there is some chaff that clearly isn't needed like the hook for the ads.

The problem, as I see it is twofold.

Problem one is that nearly all of the schematics are available elsewhere, the perceived necessity isn't there. This leads to problem two.

Problem two is that without perceived necessity, everyone wants to use it for free (including me) and no one wants to make a donation. Let's face reality here. If I had to pay even a small fee like 50 cents for each d/l, I'd find a redundant free copy somewhere else. Unfortunately, this is simple economic force working towards equilibrium.

Without a generous benefactor, continuation of the site becomes impossible. And, so it goes. It matters not that we like the layout and the interface. Someone still has to pay the piper. As a community, wittingly or unwittingly, we ampaholics have voted with our feet to find our schematics elsewhere.

There are still about two weeks until the site goes dark. I am hoping someone else will mirror the site and find a way to host it. Of course, we should all expect it to go dark without warning. Don't wait if you want the content.

BTW, it is just marvelous how well the software does it. I used the shareware program WinHTTrack Website Copier and it took nearly 8 hours over a wireless connection inside my house. No matter, as I let it run overnight and doing it slowly may have been better as it may have been easier on the host with respect to use of bandwidth. I suppose if I'd plugged into the router, it would have been considerably faster as the wireless throttled the throughput at about 25 mbit/sec. I'm sure that wired, it is gigabit.

[rp]

Anyone know if the SH is more complete than Hoffman's? Otherwise no need to bother. It took me about 15min with downthemall addon which does do what the other apps to, actually grab the files not just the links. If you go to each brand's page and dl from there there's mostly pdfs to grab with little html stuff. Some of the other non amp stuff, like mods page, is all html files that open in a browser. Those are good too, it's just data, not like boxes of paper.

Seems the best economic model is hoffman's, host the schematics to help sell parts. like WE or Mullard giving away designs to sell tubes. Anyway, I'm not always online so I'm glad I finally got motivated to dl all the schematics anyway.

I believe this will fit on a single DVD..

What's a DVD?

[Phil_S]

I believe this will fit on a single DVD..

What's a DVD?

Something your dog ruins when you play Frisbee with it? Seriously, a gauge of compactness. As noted above, this is small by today's standards.

In the meanwhile, curiosity got the better of me, so I did 5 minutes of research. I don't really know much about web hosting, maybe enough to be dangerous. I believe the real cost is not in hosting the site, which can probably be done for $10/year, but in the "puts" and "gets" what cause data transfers. Excessive amounts of d/l and u/l traffic will run up the cost into the hundreds of dollars per month very quickly. If we knew what the typical traffic was on s/h, we would have an idea of the monetary resources required.

[NickC]

I believe this will fit on a single DVD..

What's a DVD?

Something your dog ruins when you play Frisbee with it? ......................

It's the shiny, thin, plastic platter you smear peanut butter on, and then put in the Blueray player to cleanse the lens.

[10thTx]

I don't think you will find a schematic in Schematic Heaven that is not also on the Hoffman site.

With respect, 10thtx