PSA: Check old PDF manuals before you trash them

I was digging through a box of junk from a house I'm reflooring in Portland last week and found a PDF manual on CD-ROM for a 1995 furnace. Figured it was worthless, but I opened it on an old laptop I keep around for fun. The manual had wiring diagrams and troubleshooting steps that the company's modern website doesn't even host anymore. I ran into a problem with my own furnace three days later, and that old PDF saved me a $200 service call. The internet is full of these dead docs from the early 2000s that still have useful info. I've started hoarding copies of old manuals from job sites now just in case. Anyone else find a random old file that bailed you out?

2 comments

2 Comments

brianellis15d ago

Huh, not to be that guy but... CD-ROMs usually don't have PDFs on them, they're just regular PDF files stored on the disc. I mean the term "PDF manual" is fine but a CD-ROM is just a physical disc, not a file format. Either way, I get what you're saying. I've got a drawer full of old driver discs from like 2003 that I keep around for the same reason. Maybe it's just me but I think people throw away way too much useful stuff without checking what's actually on it.

blair_davis5014d ago

@brianellis brings up a good point about the CD-ROM thing, but here's what I've noticed digging through these old discs. A lot of those early 2000s manuals were actually scanned as images and saved as PDFs, so the term fits even if the tech is clunky. What nobody's said yet is how these files can have malware or old scripts that newer computers freak out over. I had one crash a whole folder because it had an embedded font that was corrupted. Still worth keeping them on a separate drive. Better to check them on a junk computer first, though.