My father bought an Oric Atmos when I was a kid, and it came with a full documentation of the 6502 instruction set (or so I think, I don't know if it actually came with it or if my father bought it separately, but I tend to doubt the latter).
> Today's kids can get in depth information on almost anything
OTOH, in the 80's, CPU instruction sets were tractable, and writing machine code was in the realm of possibilities for kids (I should know, I did it ; it was loads of fun).
Edit: found it. Somehow different, but that's the closest to what I remember: http://www.defence-force.org/computing/oric/library/lib_manu... Chapter 10 and Appendixes were invaluable.
> Today's kids can get in depth information on almost anything
OTOH, in the 80's, CPU instruction sets were tractable, and writing machine code was in the realm of possibilities for kids (I should know, I did it ; it was loads of fun).