That was our point... manuals were better. Dearth is correct only if you compare those manuals to today’s resources... YouTube videos? Can you imagine Ben Eaters videos in 1983? We both would have killed for something like that!
Hmm, maybe. I find the technical depth lacking in those videos. Hooking something up, or writing a couple lines of basic/assembly isn't anything compared with the list of peek/poke/call addresses in the back of two or three books books from the 1980s. I have the original apple ][+ manual with the assembly listing for the ROMs. I will put that manual up against every youtube video I've seen for technical depth (it also has schematics).