History backround from me:
I have been grown up with the Commodore C64 and Amiga 500. But during the early 90's, the IBM compatible PC is getting more and more important for gaming.
A school friend of mine, he has got already an Intel 486/DX-2 66Mhz PC, i think it was a ESCOM or a Highscreen. He was playing adventures, action and simulation games with 256 colors, hard disk and "high speed 66MHz". Games are getting more demanding according to hardware, and i was still playing with 32 colors, only one floppy drive and only 7.09 Mhz of my 68000 cpu...

So the early 486 and then Pentium computers were really expensive back in the day and I couldn't buy any of these...
Here in my home country, there were the most important IBM compatible distributors during '94 and '95 :
- VOBIS and ESCOM
I remember that i was reading all the advertising papers with Highscreen and ESCOM PC, monitors and lots of other accessories...

History backround:
Escom (computer company)

Since original ESCOM computers are getting quite expensive these day's on eBay, and there are not many chances to get a cheap one from a seller in the neighbourhood... i have decided to build an ESCOM clone this way:

Boundaries:

• Have got a nice Vobis Highscreen tower for <20€. This project is still "working on progress". It comes with a Socket 5 board and a 200W AT PSU.
• Have got a nice "new-old-stock" desktop AT case (Leadman LC-402+LP-535) for only 15€ which i 've found locally. It comes with a 60W PSU and all additionall screws, slot brackets and spacers...

This is the Leadman case for the ESCOM clone:

It is quite similar to the former 286 and 386 ESCOM computers back in the day.
Here are two people with this type of ESCOM case which is quite similar to my case. The only differences i really see are the two buttons and the horizontal elongated holes at the bottom front case. Everything else looks exactly the same.

"German ESCOM 286 AT build with retrobright"

"Escom Intel 286 Desktop PC – mit Turbo Modus doppelt so schnell"

Previously, i wanted to buy 386 parts for this case. But these parts are relatively quite expensive, it is obviously normal when there is a high demand at this market...
Because first, i don't want to spend too much money into this project and i also have 2 alternatives to reach 386 speed levels (AMD K6-2 and pentium low clock and cache disable...) .
And second, after the amiga time my focus was to the 486 and early Pentium computers for sure.

Reason why i have taken the socket 5 board from the Highscreen tower, to build it into the ESCOM clone:
- The Highscreen tower has a 200W PSU. The Leadman (ESCOM clone) desktop has a 60W PSU. Both are unique and cannot be changed to each other.
- The P75 has a TDP of 8W. A P150 / P166 has a TDP of 11.6W / 14.5W
- Regarding this difference of TDP's and that both ESCOM and Highscreen targets the years 1994 - 1996 with P5, P54C and P54CS CPU's

Here are the parts i have chosen:

• Pentium 75
• ELITEGROUP SI54P AIO, Revision 2.1, Socket 5 board with SiS 85C501 /-502 /-503 chipset,
  256 kb L2 cache
• 16Mb FPM ram (70ns)
• 512Mb compact flash card with CFtoIDE adapter
• PCI VGA - S3 Virge 4Mb or Matrox Millenium 4Mb
• ISA Soundblaster Pro clone (ELITEGROUP AI-101)
• Dreamblaster S2
• Quad Speed CD-ROM - Mitsumi FX410A
• 1.44Mb 3,5 inch floppy
• 1.2Mb 5,25 inch floppy
• Leadman AT case with 60W AT PSU

More details will come with the next posts...