IBM ROM BASIC or lack thereof - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

7 Oct 2001

ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote:
...
  Yes, stupid isn't it. I've some across
programs where the 
 help files for 
 installation are compressed on the CD-ROM, and thus can only be read 
 after installation. I wonder which genius came up with that idea. 
This is not terribly clever :-)

...
  Ditto for putting hardware docs in machine-readable
form 
 only. The time  you _need_ those documents (as opposed 
 to just wanting a bit of light 
 reading) is when the machine won't boot.... 
Apart from the word "only" above, I humbly disagree.
I have less than perhaps 300 paper manuals and
printsets in all (and a fair proportion of those
are non-technical Owner's Manuals and the like).
Electronic manuals are a godsend for those of us
who are severely restricted space-wise. Add to
that all the scans of manuals and printsets
that I can now find on the net, and I think
that electronic manuals are terrific.

I don't expect to read my manual on the Rainbow that I
am repairing ... that's what the PC or laptop
is for!

...
  And a lot of modern manuals, even when you've
figured out how to read 
 them do not contain the information that I would need. Not 
 even what I 
 would consider to be 'basic' information, like pinouts and 
 data formats.  
True but probably understandable these days. Things
change so rapidly that there is no time to generate
the manual. The schematics will exist somewhere (although
getting hold of them will be difficult for an outsider
for the usual reasons of commercial sensitivity) but
documentation is usually sketchy at best. Things
may be a little different in the consumer arena,
but the most I've been able to find have been
the TV manuals in the RTSG (or whatever it's called ...
my current TV came with a five year guarantee and the
previous one was a Decca series 80 chassis that was already
old when I got it ... must be 10 years since I've needed
to pop into a library to consult that book!).

Antonio