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then the question becomes.... why was the original machine not simply expandable with extra sidecars, why couldn't they upgrade their TI 99 4/a or PC Jr with si

then the question becomes.... why was the original machine not simply expandable with extra sidecars, why couldn't they upgrade their TI 99 4/a or PC Jr with sidecars so it could do the same as a machine that provided "more out of the box". is it because CPU freq kept doubling every 18 months or whatever? but i would argue, when that doubling stopped and we reached the 5 ghz limit, we didn't see sidecars make a comeback in computer land. the closest thing we have is external GPU which is still, after all, cabled, not sidecard. i am making a hypothesis again that the cost of upgrading a machine with sidecars is always going to be higher than just buying a machine that allows lower cost upgrades via slots or cables. or in Apple worldview, its better 'overall' from user experience to just buy the nextgen which has very little or no expandability. and just guess what people actually need/want based on careful research and connection with customer base. now i dont have good data on cost of sidecard vs other interconnects but it seems inherently higher to me. thanks for the response.

vidarh 3y ago
It's very simple: Because these machines were for the most part cost-cut to the very bone for people to be able to afford buying them at all. When I bought my first Amiga, an Amiga 500 was the most I could afford. When I could afford to add a (sidecar) harddrive, that was all I could afford. If I were to wait until I could afford an Amiga 2000 and an internal harddrive, that might have been cheaper than the combination but it would have meant waiting a couple of years to get one at all. These were the market realities these machines were built for. And, yes, that made it a lot less attractive for machines targeting business customers. But I'll note not so much because of the cost of the boxes - my first harddrive cost almost as much as Amiga had cost. Used. It'd have been almost as expensive as an expansion card for a big box, because the controller was pretty much a full computer on it's own, and the drive itself was ridiculously expensive.

vidarh 3y ago

It's very simple: Because these machines were for the most part cost-cut to the very bone for people to be able to afford buying them at all. When I bought my first Amiga, an Amiga 500 was the most I could afford. When I could afford to add a (sidecar) harddrive, that was all I could afford. If I were to wait until I could afford an Amiga 2000 and an internal harddrive, that might have been cheaper than the combination but it would have meant waiting a couple of years to get one at all. These were the market realities these machines were built for. And, yes, that made it a lot less attractive for machines targeting business customers. But I'll note not so much because of the cost of the boxes - my first harddrive cost almost as much as Amiga had cost. Used. It'd have been almost as expensive as an expansion card for a big box, because the controller was pretty much a full computer on it's own, and the drive itself was ridiculously expensive.