simple apple questions

A quick follow-up to this before anyone "jumps" on me - I would not even think about posting something which is still available from standard sources - I have not checked to see if you can actually still buy an A2 reference manual from anyone - perhaps there's someone with a warehouse full of them? As noted above, this is not something that I am currently considering. This is more of a "distant future" question - at some point the original material will not be generally available (this may already be the case for some of it), and people wishing to learn about these historic machines will have to either borrow it or steal it (photocopy/scan etc.) - as books get older, rarer and more fragile, borrowing will become harder and harder, as will physical replication. Are there any procedures in place to allow this material to be preserved, or does it just "die off"? Many of the manufactures of obsolete computer hardware/software that I have been able to contact have been very helpful. For example, when I asked Dr. Grant, co-founder of NorthStar computers if I could post the NorthStar OS & software (under my simulator) and scans of NS documentation, he responded "North Star is defunct so there is no problem whatsoever. Have fun.". I've had similar responses from a number of other people who "own" dead computer companies. Books however are a different matter, with published books, you have both the Author and the Publisher with interests in the book. I think it would be a lot more complex to obtain similar permissions, but to be honest, I have not tried - anyone here ever gotten permission to distribute the content of a published book? Regards, -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Vintage computing equipment collector.