The Problem with Old Hardware: Drivers Are Getting Harder and Harder to Find

The FPS Review may receive a commission if you purchase something after clicking a link in this article.

Image: See-ming Lee

Intel’s recent decision to remove legacy drivers from its website has reignited a concern among enthusiasts who have made a hobby out of collecting and running older hardware. As pointed out by Motherboard, finding drivers for vintage gear is becoming a frustrating endeavor that often requires scouring archived pages, such as those hosted by Internet Archive. The planned deprecation of FTP sites (a once-popular dumping ground for drivers and software) by popular browsers won’t help matters, either.

Realizing that this would be an issue, Scott had the Archive Team save whatever they could from public FTP sites a few years back into a section of the Internet Archive called the FTP Site Boneyard—one FTP site getting the treatment was Intel’s, which has an archive dating to 2014. That’s great news for folks who have devices from before then, though it’s not exactly solace for what comes after. And the motivation for companies to make an effort to simply keep consumer drivers available may simply not be in a forward-thinking company’s DNA.

Discussion

Tsing Mui
News poster at The FPS Review.

Recent News