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@thomasfuchs Still far more elegant than the Amiga Sidecar.

Anyway, the obsession with stacking is more understandable after you look at an expanded TI-99/4A system ... it just goes off to the right and keeps going and going and going and going ...

@isaackuo @thomasfuchs Nothing wrong with a sidecar-type expansions - when it's a one-off. When you start frequently stacking several end to end then obviously it gets a bit ridiculous, but the alternative is stacking separates... with some often expensive custom cable, if it's a full bus rather than just some centronics or serial.

@hatter @thomasfuchs Take a look at the Amiga Sidecar, though. It's outrageously inelegant and impractical, and it gets worse and worse the closer you look. The way the Amiga was designed, the expansion slot floats up in the air, requiring really ugly stuff to get something like the Sidecar to work. And also, the mouse and keyboard ports are on the same side as the expansion slot which is ... ugh ... quite lamentable.

@isaackuo @thomasfuchs Ah you're right, I was thinking of the A500-style ones which followed the box and wedge profile, pretty sure some folk called those sidecar designs, whether it was hardware emulators or HDs, memory upgrades, other options.

Isaac Ji Kuo

@hatter @thomasfuchs LOL, yeah I think they were generally called "sidecar" expansions, which makes the name of the Amiga Sidecar extremely funny. The MacCharlie was a brilliant name that told you what it was without outright saying "IBM" or "PC" or "MSDOS".

(At the time, IBM's PC advertising featured a Charlie Chaplin knock-off.)

The Amiga "Sidecar"? What the heck were they thinking even? Ah, it's a total mystery how Commodore went bankrupt...