For a while in the 1980s there was a weird obsession about stacking things on and under computers #retrocomputing
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Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 00:37:13 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️ -
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Bill Tozier (vaguery@a2mi.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 01:05:17 JST Bill Tozier @thomasfuchs I remember using a huge 2-bay Bernoulli Drive underneath a horizontal-format IBM PC-AT for a summer job in the mid 80s. It was slightly bigger than the CPU box.
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Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 01:05:17 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️ @Vaguery 2-bays big boi
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Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 01:11:22 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️ IBM even made their own expansion unit for the IBM PC
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Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 01:15:16 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️ This stacking problem is even referenced in contemporary ads for office furniture
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Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 01:23:01 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️ @snaeqe @leyrer I'm talking specifically about personal computers. Fun fact, server racks date back to the 1920s :)
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snaeqe (snaeqe@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 01:23:02 JST snaeqe *looks into any random datacenter*
Today, these things are computers, and we stack other things, also being computers, on top of them. -
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Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 01:26:35 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️ Maybe the ultimate expression of this is the MacCharlie, an expansion that sort of almost eats up your Mac and your Mac's keyboard to make it IBM-compatible.
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Jamie Blumberg (jamie_blumberg@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 02:09:47 JST Jamie Blumberg @thomasfuchs I still maintain a stack of my own.
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GuerillaGrue (guerillagrue@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 02:13:30 JST GuerillaGrue @thomasfuchs I mean... I'ma be honest, there ain't a day goes by I didn't wish there weren't still a market for cases designed to sit *under* the monitor, even nowadays. Thin as monitors are, most of 'em still have a base broad enough to justify at least an ITX if not full MATX motherboard's footprint, and with just a little bit of horizontal design that could easily translate into a powerful under-the-monitor system.
Instead, that's where we put sound bars now?
Why not both?
*shrug*
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Matthias :veritrek_red: (mpwg@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 04:22:38 JST Matthias :veritrek_red: @thomasfuchs Before dual core, before dual cpu there was: dual pc.
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Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:41:32 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️ @isaackuo @hatter yeah commodore without tramiel was doomed, one of the worst business decisions in history to oust him
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Isaac Ji Kuo (isaackuo@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:41:33 JST 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...
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Isaac Ji Kuo (isaackuo@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:41:34 JST Isaac Ji Kuo @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.
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the hatter (hatter@metasocial.com)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:41:34 JST the hatter @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.
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the hatter (hatter@metasocial.com)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:41:35 JST the hatter @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.
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Isaac Ji Kuo (isaackuo@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Nov-2023 10:41:36 JST Isaac Ji Kuo @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 ...
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