When a product reaches a certain age, most manufacturers erase it from history. They remove all traces of it (Kim Jong Un style). As if the product never existed. Stripping you of dignity and insulting your intelligence just for the mere thought of searching for something no longer sold as new.
HP is also dirty rotten motherfuckers for sanitizing old products and all info about them from their website. But it is interesting that HP at least confesses to the practice. A link was supposed to lead to HP’s site about an old laptop and instead the attached popup is presented.
Well that’s shit. They used to keep loads of old documentation (even though they kept moving them and breaking links) for corporate stuff. It was great to be able to look up specs of old servers etc and get drivers.
HP Enterprise (servers, storage, switches) still do maintain that. You want an original spec sheet and list of part numbers for a ProLiant Gen2 from 2000 (when that was still a Compaq product, long before HP bought them), or firmware and drivers for the same? That’s all still there.
https://support.hpe.com/connect/s/product?language=en_US&kmpmoid=316587&tab=driversAndSoftware
Some of that might require an account to download (which is a whole other conversation), but the important enterprise stuff persists.
HP Inc (workstations, laptops, printers, monitors, etc) are the problem children here.