Increasing the number of ISA slots

[JimS]

I used to have a board - I think it originally belonged in a Packard-Bell PC- that plugged into an ISA slot and had 3 ISA slots on one side and 2 on the other. I tried it in my A2000's farthest ISA slot and it did work... gave me 2 extra slots, since it took one and I could use the three on one side.... of course, those cards were hanging in mid air, and the case wouldn't go on. ;-)
 But it worked. ;-)

[JimS]

"Hanging out in the air" was standing upright for me, so it worked ok.  I took power for the cdrom from another case with a dead 386 motherboard to appease the power supply.  I turned the whole mess on with a power strip and it worked perfectly.
 This led to the question about ISA expansion chassis.  

Back in the days of the 1000, there was a gizmo called "Bill's Board", I think, that plugged into the 1000's expansion slot and gave a whole bunch of slots, both Zorro and ISA. The thing was huge... After the Bridgeboard came out I remember a lot of folks clamoring for the expensive ISA cards that had all the peripherals on one board. As to the extra drives, well we used to use PC minitowers as external drive bays. Instead of dead motherboards, a big resistor served as dummy load for the power supply.