2 Apr
2001
2 Apr
'01
12:28 p.m.
At least with S100 stuff (say) you often had
schematics. And pinouts of
all the connectors. And data sheets for the chips. Some manufacturers
were better than others, of course, but few supplied only manuals that
were as bad as the so-called documentation you get with PC products these
days.
Both of my kit systems (Heath/Zenith Z-100 and SWTPc 6809)
have excellent manuals that go into the timing, schematics, and chip
datasheets. Tandy used to have available seperately some excellent
tech manuals on their various systems. I've got a number of them,
including the nearly 400page service manual for the Model 2000.
Osborne had a pretty serious set of tech manuals for their products
as well, the ones for the Executive spanning 5 volumes, including the
source for it's ROM monitor and BIOS. Atari did a similar manual for
the 400/800.
With most of today's systems, you're lucky to get any kind of
manual at all. It's just as likely to be a flyer of just a few pages
as it is to be a PDF file on the system CD. Certainly nothing that
goes too in-depth into the actual hardware.
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757