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Documentation on system-level details was available, with DEC’s servers and workstations (PDP, VAX, MIPS, Alpha) and the Motorola computer products (e.g., the MVME board series for 68/88k and PPC) as great examples.

The availability of documentation enabled the porting of Linux and BSD systems in the 1990s without wasting a lot of time on reverse engineering the hardware details from the original OS.

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What i find interesting is that this used to be the case on PCs too. For example i have a manual from my first PC's "ATI Graphics Solution" graphics card that came with full information in the manual on BIOS calls, memory layout, etc on how to program it, including BASIC and C source code in the floppy disk.

The flip-side is that producing that manual was the work of 10 people.

Writing those things must have been an enormous endeavor.

This extends to videogame manuals.

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