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From: robinson@shadow.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Addison-Wesley RKM
Message-ID: <14873@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Tue, 15-Jul-86 22:13:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.14873
Posted: Tue Jul 15 22:13:51 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Jul-86 06:30:28 EDT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: robinson@shadow.Berkeley.EDU (Michael Robinson)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 49
Keywords: Commodore asbestos advisory

***FLAME ON***

I have several friends who were lucky enough to buy the Commodore RKM when
it was still possible to get it from Amiga dealers.  For $24.95 they got 
a manual thicker than the Oakland White Pages and complete with all the 
information anyone could possibly ever want out of it.

I was not so fortunate, however, and I have been waiting anxiously for the
Addison-Wesley version so I could commence with some serious DEVELOPMENT.
Until now I have only been able to use my Amiga to show all the demos to my
friends.  I have just patiently been watching the source code posted to the
net and thinking about how nice it would be to have some idea about what 
was going on.

So the local bookstore finally received something from Addison-Wesley that
claimed to be a Rom Kernal Manual.  The price was the same--$24.95--but
there was only a tiny part of the original manual!  The book covers 
Exec, which is necessary knowledge for making programs behave well in the
Amiga environment, but which is useless if you don't have the necessary 
information to make the programs in the first place!

The back cover promises a second part to the RKM, Libraries and Devices, or
something, which will presumably be available for $24.95 as well.  After
spending $50.00 I will only have about two thirds of the information in the 
original RKM.  I suppose the missing stuff will be provided for an additional
$24.95 eventually.

So, whenever that day appears (hopefully before the Amiga gets obsoleted by
the next generation of micros), I will have spent $75.00 to get what my 
friends got for $25.00 way back when the Amiga software market was an
uncluttered open field.

Then, hopefully, I will still have the desire to develop software for the 
machine.

***FLAME OFF***

							--An (otherwise) satisfied customer

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer:  Any opinions or ideas expressed above are entirely my own
responsibility, but they are the intellectual property of The Regents of
the University of California, just in case they become profitable.

"Look, there's God coming out of the men's room."
					 --Woody Allen, _Annie Hall_

ARPA:	robinson@ernie.berkeley.edu
USENET:	ucbvax!ernie!robinson