scott wrote:
>> I thought you were another Acorn veteran? IIRC the BBC Micro series, 
>> as well as the Archimedes, all shipped with full manuals, including a 
>> BASIC programming guide and a full list of BASIC-accessible OS calls.
> 
> They all had the BASIC manual, but IIRC not the accessible OS calls (all 
> OS calls were accessible from BASIC, weren't they, isn't that what SYS 
> did?).

I think so; on the Arc, I think any SWI could be called using SYS from 
BASIC, but I was also thinking of the graphics commands and VDU 
statements and things like that (some of which were equivalent to SYS 
calls, I think).

> The manual did not tell you how to swap screen buffers, create 
> Windows, read from template files, create icons etc - all pretty 
> important for more than text based programs.

Yes, true, I think there was a separate guide again for desktop 
programming. Although building applications (as well as the icons etc) 
was something you could do just by looking at existing programs; almost 
no programming necessary except for setting system variables etc. As you 
say, the magazines were also very helpful explaining these concepts.

>> I think you had to buy the assembly-language stuff
> I picked up a 2nd hand copy of an assembly programming book at some 
> computer show, it was more of a reference manual, but I still taught 
> myself assembler from it.

Ditto. Hardly remember any of it now though ;)

>> and the complete OS reference manual separately, though.
> Unfortunately yes, and they were very pricey, like 100 pounds I think.  
> Way too much for someone at school to spend.  Maybe if I had bought them 
> I would have got on my feet much quicker with programming.

I've still got a copy of the four-volume version (RO 3.1 I think, so 
that wouldn't cover the extensions in RO 3.5+), but I can't remember 
where I got it - hardly used it either!

Happy days... :)

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