IBM-PC Technical Reference Manuals (was: "Real Computers")

Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote: There was a technical reference manual for PC-DOS as well as the technical reference manual for the hardware... I got both of them when IBM was still selling the original PeeCees, but they were, for some odd reason, difficult to obtain even back then (e.g., various people at IBM denied that they existed... and if you really wanted to have fun with IBM's biz'droids, you could telephone IBM and ask them what "wet bulb temperature," as specified in the machine's storage/operating conditions specifications, was! Many of them would actually deny that there was such a specification.). Does anyone know why these books were so difficult to obtain from IBM, even when the systems were new? It seems to me that, for what they charged for PeeCees back in the early days, they should have included useful documentation with them, such as the Hardware Technical Reference Manual. The documentation that came with them was, basically, useless, unless all someone wanted to do was write BASIC programs that didn't do anything particularly hackish. -- Copyright (C) 2002 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.