Agreed, but small nitpick: the early ‘80s was mostly 8 bit, eg the C64, Apple II, MSX, etc. It was possible to acquire a more or less complete idea of how thes

Agreed, but small nitpick: the early ‘80s was mostly 8 bit, eg the C64, Apple II, MSX, etc. It was possible to acquire a more or less complete idea of how these machines worked. My C64 had documentation that detailed every memory location, register and port right down to the hardware. It made them really compelling to ‘80s nerds like me.