Keysight Archive Manual Quality?

[Chris56000]

Hi!

What on earth have Keysight used to scan old HP manuals with?

I've just downloaded the 1710a Oscilloscope manual from them and like nearly all the others, it looks like they dipped spiders in toner–powder and left 'em to scuttle across the paper, and they're getting progressively worse each one they upload!

I really feel I'll end up having to rewrite this one from scratch all over again and Dave @ Artek hasn't got it – he did post on here asking for an original 1710a manual I believe!

Chris Williams

[edpalmer42]

AFAIK, Keysight doesn't scan anything.  They, actually HP started it, just offered to host the files.  Anyone could scan and upload a manual to their FTP site.  As a result, you get wildly varying quality.

They claim that it's a temporary staging area, but file dates of 2005 to 2009 suggest that it's been abandoned.  I don't know if you can still upload.

For some reason, the site is still at ftp://ftp.agilent.com/manuals/

Ed

[bsdphk]

Some of the manuals are scanned from microfilm copies of the original manuals.

[Cubdriver]

Yes, some of them are truly awful.  That being said, there are others that are pretty good, and I'll take a truly awful scan (for free) over NO manual at any price every time.  I much prefer paper hardcopies, and try to get them whenever possible, but am very happy that Keysight is willing to host these copies of long out of production legacy equipment.

  at the  'spiders dipped in toner' analogy - it is very fitting in some cases.

-Pat

[Chris56000]

Hi!

To make matters worse, I've just read it and it's incomplete as well – chapters 1 to 4 are completely missing, as are most of the component layouts and circuits, along with the Troubleshooting Guide from Chapter 8!

Since I made the first post it's now disappeared from Keysight altogether!

Chris Williams

[Chris56000]

Hi!

Further to the above, I've now discovered that some manuals that were previously reasonable quality have been replaced by ones that can only be described as bloody atrocious  – look at 01725–90902 for the HP 1725A Oscilloscope for example – page 1.2 is now a very dark grey–practically black page which makes the text impossible to read, page 1.3. is half of a page of similar dark–grey smudge, and all the diagrams in the "Manual Changes" chapter 7 are unreadable!

I know for a fact that the old Agilent portal had a better one than this!

Chris Williams