May 15, 2026
Scanned, saved, and slightly chaotic
ASCII by Jason Scott
After 11 years, the internet’s favorite manual saver finally pulls off the rescue
TLDR: Jason Scott says his 11-year mission to save and upload 13,000 manuals is finally done, turning a near-trash pile into a public archive. Commenters are mostly cheering him on as a hero, with the only real drama being live-stream hype and people racing to post the newest link.
This story should be about 13,000 old manuals being saved from the trash and put online for everyone to read. But in the comments, it quickly turns into a full-on Jason Scott appreciation party with a side of nitpicking and live-stream chaos. One stunned commenter did the math and basically screamed, wow, that’s about 3.5 manuals a day for a decade — the kind of dedication that makes normal procrastination look downright embarrassing. Another cut straight to the chase with the internet’s cleanest endorsement: “Jason Scott is one of the good guys.”
And honestly, that’s the mood. People are treating this like a marathon victory lap after an 11-year saga involving a warehouse rescue, volunteer armies, piles of cash, cross-country moving, and, as Scott puts it, “one tiny heart attack.” The article explains why some manuals from HP and Tektronix weren’t scanned — basically, because those companies still care about their manuals and could do a better job themselves — but the comments don’t really erupt into outrage. Instead, the biggest “drama” is wonderfully online: one person rushes in to announce he’s streaming right now on Twitch, while another gently fact-checks the archive link and posts a more updated version. That’s right: not a flame war, but a link correction battle. In internet terms, that’s basically wholesome mayhem.
Key Points
- •Jason Scott says an 11-year preservation project has resulted in 13,000 manuals being published on the Internet Archive.
- •The project began when Scott learned a warehouse of manuals was about to be discarded and negotiated a short delay to rescue the collection.
- •The manuals were moved, stored, relocated multiple times, and sorted by volunteers before digitization decisions were made.
- •Some manuals were intentionally left unscanned, including sets associated with HP-related lines now under Agilent Technologies and Keysight, and with Tektronix.
- •Scott says funding was a major constraint and that DLARC provided the key support that enabled scanning to be completed.