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From: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Addison-Wesley RKM
Message-ID: <5156@sun.uucp>
Date: Wed, 16-Jul-86 14:22:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.5156
Posted: Wed Jul 16 14:22:59 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Jul-86 05:45:29 EDT
References: <14873@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 69

If I might add some perspective to the following flame :

robinson@ernie.berkeley.edu posted the following  :

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

Please Mr. Robinson do not take this personally I use your flame only 
because it is typical of some whining that has increased in  volume of
late. 

When the Amiga came out back in October of 1985 there really was no
reason for "casual" users to buy it. It had no software, and was in
general quite unusable for anything but development. It was also at
the highest price it would probably ever be. I bought one, knowing 
that the price would go down, because I wanted to write code for
it and get a 6-9 month jump on most everyone else who couldn't see
how amazing this machine is and how great its potential. And I paid
for those 6 months. Now if someone buys an Amiga today, the same
system I have (512K, extra drive etc), they will have spent $500
less on the hardware than I did. If they by the Addison Wesly
(sp) manual set they will spend about $150 more on manuals than I did,
however,  they are *STILL* $350 ahead. As a side note, in case you didn't
know, you can still buy the $100 manual set (developers, amigados,
RKM Vol I & II, etc) from commodore, but I will warn you now that
there are things in the Addison Wesley ones that aren't in the 1.1
manuals. So you are probably better off with the A-W ones. So please
put your comments in perspective. Thanks,

--Chuck

Disclaimer : These are my own opinions etc. 
{ihnp4,decwrl}!sun!cmcmanis
a "professi