bewing wrote:I'm going to partially disagree with quok. There are circumstances, and then there are other curcumstances.
For example: I am currently working on floppy controller code, and it is very confusing, because the old wiki article was a stub, none of the emulators match any real hardware that I can access, the datasheet contradicts itself in many places, and leaves out several vital pieces of info.
Honestly, I'd LOVE for someone to throw me some code for floppy controllers at this point, that works on all real hardware.
I can learn from code just fine.
I can try each little subsection that is different from what I'm doing now, and see what they did that makes it work.
That is EXTREMELY useful information.
But for newbies, you are right, quok.
It takes a hell of a lot of experience to be able to take apart a piece of working code, to see WHY it works. Really, just as much experience as it takes to read through somebody else's code, to tell them why theirs DOESN'T work.
So you have to target your audience. If it is a newbie posting, tell them in words how to do it, or pseudocode. If you are talking to an advanced OSdever -- feel free to post code, I'd say.
Go and use google, and find the specification. this site (
http://www.mcamafia.de/mcapage0/mcamafia.htm) has on it, somewhere, I cannot recall where, a FULL list of ALL of the original IBM PC specifications, including a full, official BIOS interrupt list, information on the standard behaviour of the FDD controller, and everything.
How did
I find it and you didn't? It's a literal gold mine. It even has full documentation on the original VGA and XGA registers, and whatnot. I remember feeling elated when I found it some months back.
What justification is there for me and my hard work, at finding rare, precious documentation, and reading through it, and someone else now expecting me to water down everything to try to 'help' them? I think it would be best if they used google'd and found the information on their own. Improves their search skills, and gets them the best source for know-how: the original documentation.
EDIT: And note: this is one reason why when people are told to google, and they come and say "I checked google and didn't find anything" it really doesn't make sense.
--Do better
gravaera