Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!oakhill!dover!digital!chen
From: chen@digital.sps.mot.com (Jinfu Chen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Technical Documentation (where??)
Message-ID: <476dac91.81da@digital.sps.mot.com>
Date: 14 Dec 89 22:39:13 GMT
References: <8912120806.AA00934@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: chen@digital.sps.MOT.COM (Jinfu Chen)
Organization: Motorola, Inc. Logic IC Div, Mesa, AZ
Lines: 28

In article <8912120806.AA00934@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> S61304@PRIME-A.POLY-SOUTH-WEST.AC.UK (Rat) writes:
>(From "The Masked Rat Fink"   "Computing and Informatics Yr4")
>
>I don't know whether you non-British folks have heard of the BBC Micro
>manufactured by Acorn (of Archimedies fame!) but this came supplied with one
>of the best manuals that I have ever seen for a micro computer. It had loads
>of system information, by which I mean things like memory maps, and system
>call vector addresses. They even put a small paragraph in the manual about the
>system routines, saying that they were not trying to hide the OS from the
>programmer, infact they were being as open as they could be, whilst allowing
>for future expansion. The use of vectors allowing the OS authors to
>completely change the inside of the ROM anytime they liked without affecting
>well written software! This meant that BBC Micro software was very robust, and
>that no one really worried too much about OS versions, unless they specifically
>wanted the extra facilities offered by it.

If making money is not the goal of Atari Corp., I am very sure Atari will give
you that as well. Would you expect a user who just wants a computer to do non-
programming tasks to pay for the extra costs?

Please, memory map and interrupt vector address, etc have no bussiness in a user
manual.

What all these documentations crap really comes down to the fact that Atari
hasn't been publish a decent "Atari ST Programming Manual", and they did
promise (not sure legally commited to it though). I don't know if Atari Corp.
still sells the  documentation-only Developer Package, maybe this may stop
some of these amateur programmers moaning.