> Gunther Schadow wrote:
> 
	>Well, that's to be expected with DEC documentation. You always
	>need several bookshelves to fit in all of those. Anyway, just to

	But at least it's there when you need it. At least these days it's
	all available electronically so you get so much more information
	per foot of shelving!

	>put out some controversy, I found reading DEC stuff relatively 
	>unpleasant, and I like to read technical specifications. There's
	>a lot of repetitive stuff that could be abbreviated to make the
	>essential material more obvious. As an example, the VARM wastes a 
	>full sentence at the beginning of each optional opcode to say that 
	>this is an optional opcode. And they require the reader to read 
	>this over and over again even before they tell you what the opcode 
	>actually does. A simple asterisk or other sign on the margin would
	>have done the same job better.

	The VARM is a bit like a legal document. It can be a tad pedantic
	at times but by stating the obvious at each step it stops the
	hardware types from building a write-back cache that does
	not work every third Tuesday because they missed the warning
	at the front of the book about how some obscure stuff should
	work.

	Having said that my 1987 edition does not seem
	to do that for the instructions I looked at.

	>Yes, we even might have some. Would it be very inappropriate to
	>exchange some copies of parts of those handbooks here for 
	>educational purpose?

	Well DFWCUG are scanning (and publishing) whatever
	they can get their hands on. I guess handbooks will
	fall into that category (and since they have COMPAQ's
	blessing then you'll have no copyright worries).

	I expect that the VAX 6000 manuals are still notionally
	for sale so they might not appear for a while (always
	assuming they can get the in the first place).

	Antonio