Date   : Mon, 05 Jun 2006 14:53:17 +0100
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Stacking wedges and multiple TUBE connections (Was: Re: Cheese Wedge

David Hunt wrote:
> Back to topic, the wedge is generic for all wedge uses, just the PSU, app.
> board and top+rear plastic film is different. I'd imagine the cheese wedge
> design came pretty much the same time as the Beeb itself. Acorn wanted a
> highly expandable computer in the Proton, these modular wedges fitted the
> bill nicely.

Out of interest, is there any sane reason why Acorn didn't:

1) offer flat-topped upper portions of the cheese wedge cases so that they 
could be stacked? It seems obvious that people could easily end up with more 
than one, and the things just don't stack or spread along the desk well!

2) Design the TUBE interface so it could handle multiple devices (connected up 
  and selectable from the beeb - not necessarily switchable without a machine 
restart though, which would be more work). I would have thought right from the 
TUBE's design phase they would have at least had 6502 and Z80 copros in mind, 
and seen that some people would won both. The beeb was a rather expensive 
machine as it was - I can't imagine a few more TTL gates to do necessary 
buffering/selection would have put much on the cost, surely?

cheers

Jules