Re: Apple //c Technical Reference Manual

["David Wilson" <mcs6502@gmail.com>]

mdj wrote:
> I have the workbench edition, not the hardcover text published later.
> Is the text much the same sans errors? There were a lot of changes made
> to ProDOS over the years that it'd be nice to have documentation for,
> but I'm unsure if the later text contained much that the older one
> didn't.

I have just been visually comparing them. They are very similar (for
example section 1.1.2 gains one bullet point stating "A volume
directory holds up to 51 entries") and neither mention the QUIT system
call. Section 3.2 adds a tiny bit more info mentioning /RAM and search
order when started from a hard drive.

In section 3.3 all references to 48KB Apple support are removed. There
are other small additions (4.4.5 lists more File Types) while neither
mention error code $2F in section 4.8. Section 5.2.2 is vastly
expanded.

Section 6.3.1 adds info about 4 drive cards using other slots but gets
it wrong (claims slot 5 goes to slot 1 and slot 6 goes to slot 2
whereas only slot 5 can have 4 drives and it uses slot 2 for the
overflow) and both get the interpretation of bits 5-4 of $CNFE wrong.
Section 6.3.2 lists the wrong error codes in the workbench edition  -
this is corrected in the later edition.

These are just some of the differences I noticed. Of course none of the
enhancements added in the later versions of ProDOS 8 (the 80 column
system program selector and the Smartport support added in v2.0 to name
two) are in either manual.