Cartridge port for Amiga in 1985?

[orb85750]

Why not?  Was the memory capacity of cartridges too low, or were they simply becoming too expensive to manufacture?

[LoadWB]

I would surmise that one could have created cartridge-like expansions for the side port.  This was done for several game cartridges for the TI-99/4A (like "Miner 49er") to take advantage of the 16-bit bus available at the peripheral expansion port.

(IIRC, it was also to allow the use of larger ROM sizes, as the cartridge port was limited on ROM space in favor of the use of GROMs, specialized ROMs which used serial read sequencing rather than addressed space.)

Anyway, back to the point, I suppose the question becomes, why?  Yes, ROMs were expensive then, far more than floppies.  As well, I am sure people happily accepted load times for floppy-only games rather than removing their side-car expansions (even though for some floppy-only games you have to disable the expansion if it is an accelerator or has a bootable controller.)  And in terms of Commodore, we already know they were cheapskates, so I seriously doubt anyone there could have justified the use of ROM cartridges where other, less expensive, media and manufacturing processes existed.

An additional concern would be the wear-and-tear on the contacts which plagued every other cartridge-based system.  I shudder at the thought of an Amiga-related "blow into the cartridge" legacy, a procedure proven to be ineffective as the coincidental "fix" was actually re-seating the cartridge.

But more paramount to me would be the increased exposure to static discharge, as if we did not already have enough of that to be concerned about.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I'm sure cartridges were profitable for the most popular games, but it wouldn't make sense for the smaller companies. In 1985 games and apps were only 1 disk anyway.

Just price and space saving were probably the determining factors.

[redrumloa]

Even on my Commodore 64 and later 128 growing up, I rarely used the cart slot for game carts. I never bought game carts, only disk games and in the USA games were rarely on cart (at least by 1985 when I got my first 64). This slot was pretty much only used as an expansion slot, which the 1000 and 500 had. I seriously doubt I would have been interested a cart slot for the Amiga.

[dougal]

Remember that in the 80s people were used to loading games from cassette on home computers. Remember the loading time?

I went from having to wait around 10 minutes for a game to load on my Atari 65XE to much much less when i replaced it with the A500Plus.

Cartridges where not all that popular on home computers and home computer users felt they had a much more serious system with floppy disks.

Also cartriges as pointed out already in this thread cost much more to produce than floppy disks.

[shaf]

The other Problem with The Expansion Ports on the Amiga 1000 and Amiga 500 were not identical. I had a few A1000 Expansion devices ( 2 - AX1000 (2MB Ram Expansions) and 1 SA1000 (SCSI Adapter)). To use then on the A500 they needed to be upside down, which meant the A500 needed to be raised to accomidate the adapters height.

Shaf

[LoadWB]

The other Problem with The Expansion Ports on the Amiga 1000 and Amiga 500 were not identical. I had a few A1000 Expansion devices ( 2 - AX1000 (2MB Ram Expansions) and 1 SA1000 (SCSI Adapter)). To use then on the A500 they needed to be upside down, which meant the A500 needed to be raised to accomidate the adapters height.

Shaf

NO: they just had to be backwards, NOT upside down.

[huronking]

IBM had the market cornered with the PC Jr.

[orb85750]

I supposed Commodore also may have noted the blazing fast Amiga floppy load time relative to the 1541 drives for the C64.  I vaguely recall an article entitled something like, "100 activities to pass the time while your C64 software loads."

[beller]

I've never heard any discussion (going back to hanging around the dev team in '86) regarding a cartridge port.  However, since it was originally designed to be a computer disguised as a game box it is quite possible there could have been a stealth add-on to handle carts.  

Carts were associated with game machines and toy computers.  At the price the Amiga was selling at, being compared to a game machine was a very bad thing at the time.  

The infamous bust of the video game market in the '80s seems to have ended the use of cartridges on consumer machines until game machines underwent a revival in the '90s.  Amiga came after the bust and, one might say, pushed the revival of the stand-alone box which could provide better graphics (and games) than the PCs of the day.

[save2600]

I agree with Beller and others about the ROM option. It just didn't make sense back then, considering the size of many of the games. Chips were waaaay too much money back in the day AND the cost of hardware peripherals were similarly expensive. Had the Amiga been outfitted with a cartridge port, it would have further tainted the reputation of the system and besides, the thought of a "hi-end" cartridge based gaming system would have been an oxy-moron to say the least. Neo-Geo had an edge because of its arcade stature. Had that machine been "turned into" a computer or started out that way, it would have been even less successful at the time as people would have surely been confused, not the least of which on a marketing level. Coleco Adam too was a quick bushfire of sorts. Was it a game system or a serious computer? Cartridge and tape drive options built in. Branding and then marketing is everything.

[AmigaHeretic]

IBM had the market cornered with the PC Jr.

All my TRS-80 (Color Computer II) games were on carts.

[save2600]

All my TRS-80 (Color Computer II) games were on carts.

Sure, as most of those were 16kb-64kb carts, weren't they? Amiga games were all over the map, but most were closer to the 512kb+ mark. That would have made for one extremely large, heavy, bulky and expensive ROM scenario back then.

[AmigaHeretic]

Sure, as most of those were 16kb-64kb carts, weren't they? Amiga games were all over the map, but most were closer to the 512kb+ mark. That would have made for one extremely large, heavy, bulky and expensive ROM scenario back then.

Yeah, even a 4megabit cart in '85 probably would have been almost unheard of.  Begining of the 90s 4mb was becoming common, then Stryder on the Genesis came out with it's 8MEGABIT cart!!  They advertised that everywhere.  I was like, 1 megabyte?  I've had Amiga games bigger than that for years!! ;-)

[orb85750]

They could have quashed the low-end game machine stigma by only having available (at the time of the A1000 release) "instant-load" applicaton software in cartridge format, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. -- leaving the game software entirely to 3rd-party companies.  Even if cartridges were expensive to produce, application software was still very expensive in the 80s and they could have easily sold it for over $100 per cartridge.