Encyclopedias & FAQs
109 sites
https://asciitable.com/
A comprehensive reference site providing ASCII character tables with decimal, hex, octal, HTML, and binary codes for every character in the standard and extended ASCII sets. It also covers related encoding systems including EBCDIC, Unicode, ALT codes, and keyboard scan codes, making it a handy quick-reference for programmers and web developers.
http://robotstxt.org/db.html
The Web Robots Pages hosts a comprehensive database of web crawler and robot software implementations, listing hundreds of bots submitted by their owners or discovered by webmasters. A reference hub for the robots.txt standard, it also offers tools like a robots.txt checker, IP lookup, and documentation on META tags for controlling web crawlers.
https://realneowiki.neocities.org/
Neowiki is a community-maintained wiki dedicated to helping Neocities users navigate the platform, covering topics like the Neocities CLI, supporter plans, site profile customization, and style guides. Built by Neocities users for Neocities users, it serves as a practical reference hub for anyone building or managing a site on the platform.
http://audio.textfiles.com/
A massive audio archive from the textfiles.com project, collecting historical recordings from the early internet and hacker culture including conference speeches, phone phreaking pranks, and computer-themed music. Curated by Jason Scott, this repository preserves rare sound artifacts from hacker cons like DEF CON, telephone conferences, and other digital history ephemera.
https://twine2.neocities.org/
The official manual for Harlowe 3.3.8, the story format used with Twine 2 for creating interactive fiction, covering every macro, markup syntax, and coding feature in exhaustive detail. With hundreds of documented commands, changers, and variables organized across thousands of links, this reference is an indispensable guide for anyone building Twine-based games or stories.
https://ss64.com/
SS64 is a comprehensive command line reference covering Linux, macOS, Windows CMD, PowerShell, VBScript, and more, maintained since 1999. It serves as an essential quick-reference tool for sysadmins, developers, and power users who need syntax and usage details for hundreds of shell commands.
https://foldoc.org/
FOLDOC (Free On-line Dictionary of Computing) is a massive reference work maintained by Denis Howe since 1985, containing over 15,000 definitions covering everything from acronyms and jargon to programming languages, networking, and computing history. With its breadth spanning telecoms, mathematics, electronics, and even the occasional bit of 'art,' it remains one of the oldest and most comprehensive computing dictionaries on the open web.
https://ascii.co.uk/
ASCII.co.uk is a comprehensive hub for everything related to ASCII, offering art galleries, an ASCII code converter, symbol tables, URL encoding tools, and a text generator. Whether you're looking to explore user-created ASCII art, generate stylized text banners, or reference character codes, this site covers the full spectrum of plain-text culture.
http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html
The Jargon File is the legendary online lexicon of hacker slang, culture, and folklore, maintained by Eric S. Raymond (ESR) and covering everything from technical terminology to the sociology of hacker life. Version 4.4.7 includes a full glossary, essays on hacker writing and speech styles, appendices on hacker folklore, and a detailed portrait of hacker culture that has made this one of the most cited references in computing history.
http://geniac.net/odp
Created by ODP editor geniac, this page tracks and compares the growth of the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) and Yahoo Directory through detailed size charts and milestone tables spanning 1998 to 2004. It's a fascinating historical snapshot of the early web directory wars, complete with projected vs. actual crossover dates and a Q&A section explaining the methodology behind the size calculations.