This is a copy of http://textfiles.com/ that I manually downloaded and modified [in late November 2025] in order to make it available via Gemini. I spent many hours converting every single html file to something Gemini would like, but did my best to maintain the original spirit of textfiles.com.
If you enjoy textfiles.com, tweet about it with hashtag #textfiles.
T E X T F I L E S
On the face of things, we seem to be merely talking about text-based files, containing only the letters of the English Alphabet (and the occasional punctuation mark).
On deeper inspection, of course, this isn't quite the case. What this site offers is a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them. The focus is on mid-1980's textfiles and the world as it was then, but even these files are sometime retooled 1960s and 1970s works, and offshoots of this culture exist to this day.
TEXTFILES.COM Sites
BBSDOCUMENTARY: Jason Scott's BBS Documentary!
ARTSCENE: ARTSCENE.TEXTFILES.COM: Decades of Computer Art and Expression
BBSHISTORY: BBSHISTORY.ORG: Jason's Collections of Online History
CD: CD.TEXTFILES.COM: Dozens of old Shareware CDs
DISCMASTER: DISCMASTER.TEXTFILES.COM: The Search Engine for CD-ROMs
DIGEST: DIGEST.TEXTFILES.COM: The Mailing Lists That Made a Difference
WEB: WEB.TEXTFILES.COM: Textfiles That Have Come After 1995
BBSLIST: BBSLIST.TEXTFILES.COM: All the BBSes there Ever Were
TIMELINE: TIMELINE.TEXTFILES.COM: BBS-Related Events
PDF: PDF.TEXTFILES.COM: Your Eclectic PDF Collection
AUDIO: AUDIO.TEXTFILES.COM: The Sound of Online
TEXTFILES.COM has been online for nearly 25 years with no ads or clickthroughs.
If you feel like donating to its roughly $1200 yearly upkeep: Paypal or Venmo.
(If you prefer a different method, you can always contact Jason.)