Ensor wrote:
Hi, > Apple, in contrast, published *everything* needed to make >software, plug-in cards, and even more computers!So, you're saying that the Atari Technical manuals I have not 6 feet away from me are figments of my imagination? :-)True they weren't shipped with the machine, but had to be bought seperately, but they contain full schematics, operating system listings etc....By the time of the XL/XE series machines Atari had stopped publishing such manuals, but then again so had Apple etc.
They *never* stopped making all info available on the Apple II line. It was automatically included with the Apple II and II+. Around the time of the //e (1984+), as the typical user profile shifted toward "application users" instead of "programmer/enthusiasts", the provided documentation became more "user manual"-oriented--but full technical documentation was still available separately. So for the Apple II, the details and examples were there from the beginning (the Red Book and the WozPak, for example)--just when they needed to be there. I've often said that the Apple II was the last personal computer for which all the documentation needed to completely understand its hardware and software weighed less than the machine. ;-) (The Apple //e shipped into the 1990s.) -michael NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."