It's all the odder when you consider the Apple II.
It came out before any of those other home machines, and yet had the cheapest floppy disk storage from 1978 onward. That was largely due to Steve Woz's brilliant disk controller design, which did away with everything but some simple glue logic and a couple ROM chips, lifting everything else in software.
Of course, the Apple II had real expansion slots, obviating the need for using a serial connection, too.
From what I can tell, while the Apple II family had a much higher up-front cost, the more serious you were about computing, the more the low-priced home machines with expensive peripherals worked against you in the long run.
I'd agree with that. The case size, open design, accesible FW, etc. made it really easy to add custom HW to the Apple ][, I got a lot of joy out of mine. I have to admit to being a bit jealous of the C64 and Atari kids with their better gaming capability.
> and yet had the cheapest floppy disk storage from 1978 onward.
OTOH, the time-critical hack that allowed it also made it nearly impossible for Apple to upgrade the II without breaking backwards compatibility. The only Apple II with a faster 6502 is the //c+, and that because it has the crazy Zip Chip acceleration logic on the motherboard.
It came out before any of those other home machines, and yet had the cheapest floppy disk storage from 1978 onward. That was largely due to Steve Woz's brilliant disk controller design, which did away with everything but some simple glue logic and a couple ROM chips, lifting everything else in software.
Of course, the Apple II had real expansion slots, obviating the need for using a serial connection, too.
From what I can tell, while the Apple II family had a much higher up-front cost, the more serious you were about computing, the more the low-priced home machines with expensive peripherals worked against you in the long run.