What is your favorite older desktop tower case? Which one do you think looked the nicest? Mine has to be this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Compaq-Pre...580706?hash=item3b4e0d8a62:g:fQMAAOSwhnNfTr3a But I'd like to see your favorite. There were a lot of cool looking OEM cases back then, and I'm going to buy one to turn into a modern computer for my garage. I like to look stuff up out there when I'm working on cars sometimes. All the old innards will go away, to be replaced with gear from this year or last year.
As a fan of the SFF side of things, I bought one of these a couple of years ago for a few pounds: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Packard-Bell-AMD-Athlon-II-PC/ I wanted one when they were current, but still preferred building my own, and one popped up locally on Gumtree at a cheap price. It's not running anything that modern; I upgraded the Core2Duo setup to a 1st gen i3 /H55 ITX that I had spare. I'm sure I've had at least a couple of those Compaq PCs through my hands over the years, usually discarded office machines that I've refurbed and saved from going to the dump.
Yeah that one does look pretty nice. I'd be glad to have that case. (with newer guts of course) Here's another one I like but I don't know what model it was. I do remember seeing them at my high school but I can't place the brand. https://fancyball.artstation.com/projects/LnWR5 Edit: This one is also interesting. I can imagine placing some dim red LED's somewhere behind that red panel. Not overdoing it, but something that would look like it might've come that way. https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-PA...413281?hash=item1cf723f5a1:g:pzkAAOSwc7NfbOPD
000152-01 by CrapBag posted 12 Apr 2021 at 10:55 My first build was in one of these, chose it due to the blue accent and slight curviness so it wasn't just another beige box (although it was still a beige box). Used the same case for my sister's build, built like a tank.
Any PC with specs measuring in the "giga" scale is not old school. Fact. Bring back the days when a desktop was a desktop, and not a deskunder
If we're talking proper old school beige boxes, (and why not?), we were using Macs at work I wanted a Power Mac 6100/66. A lovely old school desk top pizza box with a twist. I wanted this Mac specifically as there was a hardware based 'DOS Compatible' version, (as mentioned on the Wikipedia page), running a 486 DX2/66 on a daughter card with its own RAM. This would have been perfect for work and unit stuff, as there was no Mac compatible version of MS Access at the time. Instead, I bought a cardboard box from a friend for £50 which had everything I needed to build a 486DX2 PC other than the case and PSU. That was my first PC build circa 1996. Juggling a Mac and PC was a pain, but it worked for a while. As PCs became more capable, (Mac architecture at the time was way better out of the box for multimedia and photo editing), I switched to PC only and Macs were a distant memory.
Replace the 'P5-133 'with 'PII-300', and the tape drive (I think it's a tape drive?) with an Iomega Zip drive, and you have my first ever PC that was actually mine and not shared with my family. Built like a tank. P.S. also had a CD-ROM drive just above the floppy drive.
What about the "pizza slice" Acorn Risc PC? Doors so you could cover your drives when they weren't in use, and if you ran out of room for your hardware in one slice you could stack another - or more - on top!
Well I'm primarily looking for towers that stand upright rather than the cases that you'd put the monitor on. This is because I'll be converting the old tower for use in a modern setup. The monitor will not sit on top, and space is something of a concern because I'd like to use the space next to it and behind it for other things. So in this instance, a tower is the way I need to go. I'm just looking for a stylish old tower that will make people say "Oh look at that old thing lol" I have many people that come work on things in my garage so it might be fun to have a blast from the past in there. Something we all remember from back in the day. The 1970's and the 1980's would be a bit too old for us to remember well.
That is a nice one! Of course, I'd be tempted to paint that blue something different... perhaps orange or a different shade of blue.
I'd like to nominate this HP Pavilion, circa 1999. Look at that classy smoked black plastic! It has a built in storage compartment for CDs in the top of the case! And the front USB ports are hidden behind another plastic flap! Amaze.
my first pc, served me well for many years, with Sim City, Age of Empires 2, Tiberium Sun, Red Alert 2 and Civnet ... those were the days man Even today i keep my eyes out for this case, as i have a temptation to build a sleeper in it, but i can only really find them in the US, and shipping something that heavy... yeah
