Recently, perusing some now-lost thread, I came across a link to a pdf of a 1990 W65C265 manual. It looks like it was typed up on a Selectric and Xeroxed a couple of times, but semantically, the quality of the document is so much better than the modern manual! (maybe - see below). I found myself actually understanding some things at a glance - while the newer document seems to lead me around in circles...

Unfortunately the pdf I have is a scan of the original and does not support cut/paste or search.

Does anyone have the old - preferrably ASCII or thereabouts - copies of WDC documents?

Thanks in advance.

A quick comparison
A lot of text is copied verbatim into the new manuals, but some of it is pretty different (1.6 Interrupt flag registers, for instance) - and at least sounds like it makes more sense than the subsequent effort to eliminate paragraph numbers and 'streamline the text'.

Instead of idiotic colorful tables with 'prettier' frames that take up the entire page each, TIER and TIFR register descriptions, for instance, fit on the same page as the Interrupt Enable Registers write-up, and actually demonstrate how they are connected with interrupt priority logic - instantly giving me a sense of how the timer interrupts are organized. That's 3 pages with graphics that make little sense vs 1 page with text boxes that make total sense. That's Progress (along with the machines to process a 2MB file vs an 100k file).

Compare:
to one of 3 pages (replacing a few lines of text above):

Now what in the world is a point of making a page-long table instead of noting that TIER0-TIER7 bits enable the corresponding interrupt?

Even the old manual starts out concisely with TIER, but for some reason, TIFR spells out every bit as "Timer Blah" interrupt. Since we are already numbered, why not just say bits TIFR0-TIFR7 are flags set by the corresponding interrupt?

My working theory is that some jackass, possibly Steve Jobs, demanded 'professional-looking documentation'. Runner-up: someone was paid by the page to rewrite the manual.

_________________
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. ...Jan van de Snepscheut

I have one from 1997. See attached...


Cheers,
Andy

Interesting! It has a crude 'typeset' look, with a proportional font. Maybe Steve loaned Bill a MacPlus with a Laserwriter 2! Seems to be same text mostly.

Timing diagrams are now contiguous lines rather than \_/ ascii art...

Page count: 51 -> 57 -> 65 between 1990, 1997, 2019

_________________
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. ...Jan van de Snepscheut

I assume you have something similar to this one:

I (re)found that and another one from March 1, 2000 at https://www.datasheetarchive.com/W65C265-datasheet.html.

Perhaps this may be of interest as well.


Regards,
Arne