The best documentation I've ever encountered is that for the BBC Micro. My first commercial venture was writing some stock control software for a shop which had just got into renting out videos. VHS tapes were going missing and they weren't cheap for a shop to replace back then. I wrote the whole thing in BBC Basic requiring twin floppies (for data security) using college machines. 32k twin floppy BBC's plus monitor were not cheap. Shop got a second hand deal. Software didn't work. Turned out that early beeb didn't support random file access. I forget the reason why/how (?basic/bios rom?) but due to copious documentation I was able to use the bbc basic assembler to implement random file access.
As we all know, Acorn went on to produce the arm chip. Sure, with linux, documentation is there for those who care to dig but no-one can know all of it. Probably RPI know this so in conjunction with producing more complex rpi, we have the pico.
I recall taking a job with a fruit machine company. 68k based motherboard - no documentation at all. You used the board with their windoze cross-compiler. No 68k operating system: you had to debounce each button press in software and don't update windoze or their compiler would break.
Documentation is key. Folk have done mad stuff with pico etc, in the spirit of acorn.
As we all know, Acorn went on to produce the arm chip. Sure, with linux, documentation is there for those who care to dig but no-one can know all of it. Probably RPI know this so in conjunction with producing more complex rpi, we have the pico.
I recall taking a job with a fruit machine company. 68k based motherboard - no documentation at all. You used the board with their windoze cross-compiler. No 68k operating system: you had to debounce each button press in software and don't update windoze or their compiler would break.
Documentation is key. Folk have done mad stuff with pico etc, in the spirit of acorn.
Statistics: Posted by swampdog — Wed Jan 01, 2025 1:50 am
