Who went all-in on sidecar expansion and not PEB?

[S1500]

Did anyone, BITD didn't bother with the Peripheral Expansion Box and decided to get everything on the side car? We're talking disk controller, serial & parallel port, etc.

 

Surely someone had a large enough desk to do it.

[digdugnate]

it was a little of column a, little of column b. at first we had the whole long setup (synth, ram, disk controller, rs232, disk drive)- also with coupler modem and program recorder.

 

shortly after that, though, we went full PEB.

[RXB]

I would never give up my SAMS and SCSI card for a sidecar unless they make a version with these.

[mdilling]

I had everything except the RS232. That would be synth, memory, thermal printer and disk controller. It was definitely awkward. But, I definitely had fun with it.

[+arcadeshopper]

I had everything except the RS232. That would be synth, memory, thermal printer and disk controller. It was definitely awkward. But, I definitely had fun with it.

pictures?

[+Ksarul]

I have the Speech Synthesizer, the RS-232, the 32K, the Disk Controller (and two drives), the p-Code (the sidecar version), the Video Controller (the sidecar version), a Thermal Printer. . .and a Hex-Bus Interface. I guess that counts as going all-out with the sidecars.

[digdugnate]

I have the Speech Synthesizer, the RS-232, the 32K, the Disk Controller (and two drives), the p-Code (the sidecar version), the Video Controller (the sidecar version), a Thermal Printer. . .and a Hex-Bus Interface. I guess that counts as going all-out with the sidecars.

I just looked up a pic of the Video Controller- that's cool! Do you have a pic of the p-Code sidecar?

[+Torrax]

The best non-TI side card expansion was the CorComp Micro Expansion system. I jump from a bare console to this along with the Speech Synth back in '87. Also acquired two p-box systems in the early-mid 90's (Geneve/TI). Some where along the line picked up a 32K sideport (Box Car) and TI-Disk Sidecar.

[apersson850]

I started using the expansion box as soon as I wanted more than the basic machine. But I got the box with RS-232, TI disk controller, 32 K RAM expansion and two double sided drives in it, plus the speech synthesizer outside the box, in one fell swoop.

Later, I exchanged the disk controller to a CorComp model, to get double density and four drives. I built an extra box to house two more drives. After that, I designed my real time clock card and a digital/analog I/O card, which fits into the PEB, as well as the 16-bit 64 K RAM expansion inside the console.

 

That's about it. Any sidecar expansion was never on the table. The table got full anyway, even if my own expansion box stacks on top of the TI one.