ASCII by Jason Scott

(ascii.textfiles.com)

84 points | by bookofjoe 3 hours ago

6 comments

  • embedding-shape 3 hours ago
    > Just a little over ten years ago [...] a collection of 13,000 manuals now lives on the Internet Archive

    That's a crazy amount of time, with a nice amount of manuals now publicly available, about ~3.5 manuals PER DAY, for a decade! Few people are as dedicated as Jason Scott when it comes to making sure information stays free and available, thank you a lot for what you, Archive Team and Internet Archive is doing for all of us!

    • stavros 45 minutes ago
      I follow him on Bluesky and he routinely raises money to buy things on auction and scan them/digitize them and upload them for free. One-of-a-kind concert tapes, obscure software floppy disks, random manuals, videotapes of random shows, anything old, he digitizes it and imports it into the Internet Archive.

      Really doing great work preserving stuff that would otherwise be lost to time.

    • zozbot234 2 hours ago
      > a collection of 13,000 manuals now lives on the Internet Archive

      Why are we even doing this? This is just humanity giving free extra training to its future robot overlords. /s

      • qingcharles 2 hours ago
        Hopefully they'll be able to write better manuals.
  • ethanhawksley 1 hour ago
    The current archive link is outdated, https://web.archive.org/web/20260515155930/https://ascii.tex... is more up to date with the May 10 post
  • bityard 2 hours ago
    Jason Scott is one of the good guys.
    • Triphibian 1 hour ago
      I had the good fortune of being able to hang out and watch him and some vintage Apple enthusiasts recover some source code for an old game. I have a lot of admiration for his dedication.
    • ethagnawl 2 hours ago
      Indeed.

      His podcast, _Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It_, is an entertaining, informative and (often) touching listen, too.

  • xipho 2 hours ago
    He's streaming live "right now". https://www.twitch.tv/textfiles
  • NooneAtAll3 51 minutes ago
    Maybe I missed it, but what were the manuals for?

    What appliances? Or was it textbooks, or what?

  • crtasm 3 hours ago
    Latest post: Manuals Plus: The Wrap-Up — May 10, 2026
    • EarlKing 2 hours ago
      We'll have to take your word on that since it looks like it's being hugged to death. I can't even get an archive of it to take the pressure off.
      • textfiles 42 minutes ago
        There's a bad setting on my virtual host. I'm in conversation with the support team about getting it tuned up.