🚀 go-pugleaf

In  his Mon, 11 Dec 89 17:28:50 the Masked Rat Fink writes:

>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....<[remainder of testimonial deleted]

This eight-bit computer was (and still is, God help us) one of the worst
deals  ever. It cost(s) roughly twice as much as any sensible competition,
and achieved its position because its 'manufacturers', Acorn* (whose CEO
was not above brawling in bars with the likes of 'Sir' Clive Sinclair)
persuaded the BBC and the UK Government to grant them a licence to print
money by standardising the machine for the state education system (in
which, incidentally, since it is both obsolete and fundamentally
incompatible with everything, it has retarded British computer education by
an amount that can only be guessed at).

>My point is that if that much information can be supplied for a machine
that
was in its day what the ST is now, why was no technical information
supplied
with the ST?<

Technical publications, particularly for computers, cost a lot of money.
You paid double what your BBC Micro was worth to get them. You paid what
your ST hardware was worth without them, and didn't get them. You want
blood with it, or what? 

 If you want posh manuals for your 68000 WIMP-enivronment machine, you
should perhaps have bought a Mac, the outrageous price of which presumably
includes them (plus Steve 'Big' Jobs' coke money). 

Alternatively, buy books like 'The Second Manual for the Atari ST' which
are a great deal cheaper than most computer books and provide a lot of
useful information. The Abacus publications (which I don't have myself)
also look pretty good. My guess is that you could provide yourself with
most of what you need for less than what you would have had to pay Atari to
do it for you.

Regards,

Chaz
(Computer Technical Author, among my other crimes)

* Acorn do not in fact manufacture this machine, or the (equally bad value)
Archimedes; they have it done for them. This is another English irregular
verb:

*I* make mutually profitatble OEM contracts;
*YOU* do badge-engineering;
*THEY* can't manufacture their own product....