I’m reading the book “Atari Inc.: Business is Fun” by Curt Vendel and Marty Goldberg. (By the way, it’s a fun read, highly recommended.) It states that when the Atari engineers had been developing the Atari 800, they said that having slots like the Apple II is the “wet dream”. However, they felt it a necessity to maintain good relations with FCC, because of the Atari Consumer Division video games like Atari 2600, they cannot use the Apple strategy of dodging FCC approval by not selling the RF modulator themselves.
Instead, making another company doing this adapter and selling it separately from the Apple II. That made the Atari 800 only have Atari SIO serial connections and a heavily shielded computer with only slots for cartridges and RAM expansions. They also briefly cite the difficulties with the FCC approval that Texas Instruments TI-99 had, leading to the famous “sidecar” Expansion Slot. Subsequently, in the early 80’s the FCC “relaxed” their standards to a more liberal policy.
My Question is: In the 70’s, had there been a way that a home computer using a TV as monitor could get FCC approval for Apple II style slots without cheating? Had this been doable with 70s technology and with 1970s FCC strict rules.