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From: jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari16
Subject: Re: Query
Message-ID: <8608060047.AA16561@mitre-bedford.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 5-Aug-86 21:00:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: mitre-be.8608060047.AA16561
Posted: Tue Aug  5 21:00:55 1986
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Organization: The MITRE Corp., Bedford, MA
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Re: CPU expansion port, AMIGA vs. ST:  It looked to me (and to Paul Swanson
who is a pretty sharp ST hardware person, e.g. upgrading and repairing them as
a 520 dealer)  ...it looked to me as though the 520ST cartridge port could
probably be expanded to a full CPU bus extension port with a little effort.
A little machining on the case in this area and addition of a connector with
either the additional pins or all pins, and maybe a bunch of bus transceiver
chips, and you would probably be able to do it.  If you used the existing
cartridge port as part of the expansion connection, you would want to put a
cartridge socket in the expansion chassis so you could still use cartridge
software.

So hardware hackers need not despair -- they may be able to expand their ST
just as much as one could expand the more expensive AMIGA.  However, third
party hardware vendors doubtless won't spring up as readily, since most ST
owners won't have an expansion connector and if they do there is no guarantee
that it will be the same as anybody else's.

-John Sangster
jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa