Ask Lemmy

It’s a trove of primary source material for historians. Even presuming you don’t personally use it yourself it’s a crucial archive of human history that all will benefit from

I use it to find old software and games for my retro PC projects, currently working on a Windows XP gaming machine and maybe a DOS machine afterwards.

Without the Internet Archive it would have been a lot harder to find software.

And I love the wayback machine for looking up old websites.

reading defunct webcomics

Wayback machine very often. I also like to watch The Computer Chronicles which is on IA. I can also get old installation ISOs from there.

All the time. For websites that are no longer online, it's invaluable, what's the alternative?

Things which happened get forgotten because they're deleted. If something like Internet Archive exists that's no longer a problem.

roms. endless roms.

I just bought and restored some older but well-built deck furniture. Each piece had a badge on it with a company name and URL, but the site is long gone. Popped it into the wayback machine and instantly learned all about the furniture, its maker, and how much it cost back in the day, which was really neat.

through time

Dude, you're saying this as though the internet has been around for millennia. And as if you've never been to / heard of a library.

I've downloaded a ton of music videos to create my own self-hosted MTV station. I've downloaded music and books. I've used it to view non-paywalled (NYT) articles shared on Lemmy. I live in Philadelphia so I've used it to look up the earliest version of the "yellow pages" or "white pages" from the 1800s. I've searched for the videos they used to show us in elementary school on 16mm - stuff about the expansion of the USA, the national parks, history of my state or city, etc. I've used it to look up tv commercials from the 1980s for a bit of nostalgia and older tv shows that people have uploaded from their personal VHS collection. Some people just upload personal stuff that's entirely mundane but voyeuristically interesting. And I'm certain I haven't even scratched the surface of what's on there.

Wayback Machine, all the time. Very useful if a reference link on Wikipedia is dead (why do websites just remove articles like that? It drives me nuts). Unfortunately it doesn't handle JavaScript very well, rendering some functions of websites unusable, or breaking images. I particularly remember browsing the website for Al Jazeera Children's Channel (which is jcctv.net by the way), they had a theme switcher which unfortunately uses JS, so... I'm stuck with the blue underwater theme for some reason. And yes, Al Jazeera did do lots of non-news related stuff at one point.

The Internet Archive can be useful as well if you're looking for a very niche thing that isn't really available elsewhere. I usually use it for software, but at one point I tried searching it for an archive of Club Penguin's game files. They also have lots of public domain stuff if you're interested in that (friendly reminder: Steamboat Willie is part of it now).

Sure. Every few weeks I absolutely need it. Most of the times it's the wayback machine, looking up stuff that vanished from the internet. Or what's been on my homepage two years ago. Or what a company offered last year to compare it to the current price. Occasionally I download some old DOS games, manuals, books or audio files.

And I sometimes use the wayback machine to bypass paywalls.

I use the Wayback machine sometimes.

Norm MacDonald's old youtube podcast is on there, while it's hard to find anywhere else (they took it down from youtube when he got his Netflix show).

I've found public domain pictures on there, and I've spent time browsing very old music.

I went down a rabbithole of comparing evolving definitions of words by reading through generations of dictionaries. That would be hard to do without the IA. As well as comparing versions of books that I was considering buying.

I do - there are old sites that have gone off line that I search the Way Back Machine to look at. There are also lots of archived files available that I've used more than once (Amiga files for example, Usenet archives and even old magazines).

It's not really a day-to-day tool for everyone, but when you need it it's irreplaceable.

Pretty much any book you want to read for free, you can borrow from them. I use it very frequently to grab sections of some book I'm interested in or want to cite but don't have a physical copy of.

They also have awesome documentaries. The Mine Wars is, I think, one I saw not that long ago which was pretty sweet.

I do not donate to them for using all this awesome stuff, even though I probably should.

They've got a lot of old manuals scanned in, so I use it to reference those a lot.

Was searching for a 3d model to print some months ago.

I spotted one after a while but the download available was only for an updated version, and needed the old version.

Managed to pull off the old download link from the archive and get the file. I was pretty stoked that it worked.

A lot of difficult to find movies are on there . That's what I use it for.

I use the wayback machine a lot. The actual archive less often, but I've definitely used it to look up things that are otherwise hard to find.

Lots of sites and companies that have gone out is business can still be found there when I need info they published in the past.

There is an official polish Neon Genesis Evangelion voiceover that aired on TV once. All the other versions are with subtitles.

Yes often. I regularly work on fixing up old computers and electronics, often Archive is the place to go for old manuals and schematics. Old firmware and software is also on there.

It's so much better for people to put stuff on the Archive instead of in a random forum post somewhere with a broken download link.

I use it all the time for books and audiobooks.

But I must say, that I read A LOT and don't want to always read the new and popular stuff. Especially if you leave mainstream and the big markets (US, UK and Europe) you can find a lot of great books by authors from smaller countries that are not available otherwise. Often the translations are out of print and never been available as ebook and the scanned and digitised version by the Internet Archive is the only one I can find.

Ever tried to read the Chinese classic epos "Journey to the west" in full (not just the monkey King story)? It's in the archive. Or have you heard of one of Surinames most important writers Cynthia McLeod or read the poetry collection of Guyanese writer Grace Nichols? Or a translation of Syrias most important Poet Adunis? The Internet Archive has it all. You just have to look for it.

It also has the free domain classics from several other projects all in one place. And not to forget old movies and television. I recently watched "9 to 5" the feminist classic with Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lilly Tomlin there recently because no other streaming service had it.

Of course if you are only into blockbusters and bestsellers, the Internet Archive can't help you there.

I've been experimenting with trying to reverse engineer Overwatch 1. I was able to find lots of builds through Internet Archive when i was starting

Just for look at older versions of sites

I use it quite often. I can still download some books from The Trove (RIP), it also has all sorts of abandonware and console rom collections. It also has a decent collection of gaming magazines and CDs that would come bundled with them. There's also an incredible variety of books in there, and older programming books always catch my attention.

I've also watched the 1930 All Quiet on the Western Front film there. It's the kind of thing that pirate sites and streaming services don't bother with, because there's no demand.

A long time ago I was repairing my dad's camera, I found an article describing the exact fault & a link to how to fix it, but the link was dead.

Used the wayback machine to find a text only copy of the fix (no pictures) which was enough.

Was immensely proud that someone had had the idea to invent the IA & have been recommending it ever since.

I've used it extensively to recover old CSS themes, images, and read long dead websites. There are a couple of lost songs I found downloads for there too! I've also saved a couple of pages that I haven't had to use but it would be useful neutral third party evidence. Is it daily? No, but it's an absolute blessing to have.

Often, to read non-paywalled articles.

They have movies

Yeah, I wanted to read an article that I found in a search engine, but the og website had it removed now. I went to internet archive, but it didn't have it fetched unfortunately.

Constantly. And not just Wayback Machine. That's probably the smaller portion completed to the obscure books, especially non-English archives

Yeah! When sites no longer exist or have reorganized so that pages aren’t where they were… the wayback machine becomes very useful!

there is a monstrous amount of archived files I've needed I've the years and internet archive was the only place with them.

Mostly for public domain books, audiobooks, and movies

To remember the pre-enshitificstion days

I once used it every day for about two weeks trying to track down the original helpfiles and maxscript documentation for 3dsmax 4 and blender for windowsME. .. across various dead webpages, etc etc. Only ended up finding it on some completely unrelated warez disk. As for the really really old blender version? I don't remember. I don't even think I have the files anymore

@jeena@piefed.jeena.net Yep, I stumble upon dead links all the time, and if it's something that seems interesting I try to look it up thru internet archive

(And if it's a website that existed for a long time, it usually shows up)

Abandonware 🏴‍☠️

At least one per week, in various ways. Websites that no longer exist, obscure media I want to study... It's great!

Grateful Dead concert recordings and downloading old software/ roms.

Well. I found free downloadable versions of the Mad Max novels there. So that’s kewl. Also a good source for ebooks, if I don’t feel like reading words.

I use it for light novels like Overlord and Mushoku Tensei

Back up my blog site in case I fuck something up

Nope. I don't even know what it does.

I have never used it.

I've used it a few times to verify what was on government websites on certain dates.

Well. I found free downloadable versions of the Mad Max novels there. So that’s kewl. Also a good source for ebooks, if I don’t feel like reading words.

It's neat for getting around the paywall of some online articles. Although Firefox reader mode usually does the trick already.