Ahhh, you have the motherboard my 98 box has 😀

http://evercase.co.uk/

^ here are some ATX cases which are beige-ish, they're not old but brand new but give that retro feel 🤣

Beige. Metal. Heavy. No front USB ports. No audio jacks. A power button and a reset button. No turbo button. No serial port in front. No keyboard lock. No side panels. No round bezelness. A shiny Intel Inside Pentium II sticker. An optional MMX corner sticker (depending on how deep of 1997 you're going into). A risk of danger involved with opening and closing the case.

Follow these basics and you should have a roughly 1997-98 period accurate P2 case 😀

leileilol wrote:

No front USB ports. No audio jacks. A (...) reset button. No side panels. No round bezelness. A risk of danger involved with opening and closing the case.

My Pentium II tower case lacks a reset button, has sliding side panels, round bezelness (and top and side panels), and is very easy to work on. It's a Gateway. Was Gateway was ahead of their time?
(I guess so, that case is better than many of today's offerings... 😎 )

My late MMX case from around the same time has front USB and audio, and lacks a reset button. Its bezel is somewhat round. Also fairly easy to work on. Asus-made.

My up and coming P166 case also has a rounded bezel and no reset button.

Your mileage may vary.

IIRC, rounded bezels were just starting to show up in the late 486/early Pentium time. Reset buttons were starting to get rare when ATX became mainstream. And really risky case mechanisms only started to become really hot around the Pentium 4 era (goddamn Dells... 🤣 ).

leileilol wrote:

Beige. Metal. Heavy. No front USB ports. No audio jacks. A power button and a reset button. No turbo button. No serial port in front. No keyboard lock. No side panels. No round bezelness. A shiny Intel Inside Pentium II sticker. An optional MMX corner sticker (depending on how deep of 1997 you're going into). A risk of danger involved with opening and closing the case.

Follow these basics and you should have a roughly 1997-98 period accurate P2 case 😀

And no rear exhaust case fan (or a very very small one like 50mm and with like only 10 tiny openings and 4 screw holes for the 50mm fan).

And the case being a bit less tall and fatter with the PSU mounted sideways 😜
And having the option to slide out the entire motherboard tray with it halfway out not being able to slide it out any further due to all the molex's and other cables not being long enough 😜

leileilol wrote:

Beige. Metal. Heavy. No front USB ports. No audio jacks. A power button and a reset button. No turbo button. No serial port in front. No keyboard lock. No side panels. No round bezelness. A shiny Intel Inside Pentium II sticker. An optional MMX corner sticker (depending on how deep of 1997 you're going into). A risk of danger involved with opening and closing the case.

Most important for a P2 case is the 90 degree rotated mounting of the ATX power supply such that the PSU sucks the air from the Slot CPU and allows to have a smaller height of the case at the same time.
Maybe not the best suited pic, but it shows what I mean on the example of a slot Athlon: http://retronn.de/pictures/hardware/athlon_system/cards.jpg

hmm very interesting Elianda!!
do u have any brand names or keywords i can use to find cases with that specification?

Another example of both that PSU placement and backplane sliding system: This odd case originally housed a Pentium III 866MHz on a VIA chipset motherboard. The case has no brand/model.

(I suppose I put that small CPU fan there to store it, whilst testing wheter the PSU moved sufficient air already)

A true pentium 2 case is made from clear colored plastic like an n64.

i think ive seen that design of slide out motherboard before
my friend had one
i think its called a "lian-li"! i would never haver emembered that without seeing that pic tho 😉

http://www.lian-li.com/en/

chrisNova777 wrote:

i think ive seen that design of slide out motherboard before my friend had one i think its called a "lian-li"! i would never ha […]
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i think ive seen that design of slide out motherboard before
my friend had one
i think its called a "lian-li"! i would never haver emembered that without seeing that pic tho 😉

http://www.lian-li.com/en/

In roughly 98 this was kinda the defacto standard for ATX, I don't think only Lian-Li manufactured these cases. There were many different designs and these were all over the place for a short while.

I have several of them and all are different while manufacturers tend to create only one of a couple designs.

gerwin wrote:

Another example of both that PSU placement and backplane sliding system: This odd case originally housed a Pentium III 866MHz on a VIA chipset motherboard. The case has no brand/model.

(I suppose I put that small CPU fan there to store it, whilst testing wheter the PSU moved sufficient air already)

Do you have a picture of the front of that case?

I have a picture with three types. From left to right:

1) Originally a case for a Pentium III 600MHz, i440BX. Was sold as 'Galaxy Midi ATX'. Kinda tall. Has removable side panels. Power supply unit is type FSP-250.

2) Originally a case for an AMD Athlon 900 or later, or Pentium III 733 or later, or even Pentium IV 2800/533 (I still have the ads). It is a Q-tec 6030 MD. Came with 350W power supply for Athlon 2000+. Its has unique drive bay locking brackets, made of green plastic. Has removable side panels. I like this case and now have three of them.

3) Originally a case for a Pentium III 866MHz on a VIA chipset motherboard. This is the slide out one. Power supply unit is type FSP-235.

gerwin wrote:

I have a picture with three types. From left to right: […]
Show full quote

I have a picture with three types. From left to right:

1) Originally a case for a Pentium III 600MHz, i440BX. Was sold as 'Galaxy Midi ATX'. Kinda tall. Has removable side panels. Power supply unit is type FSP-250.

2) Originally a case for an AMD Athlon 900 or later, or Pentium III 733 or later, or even Pentium IV 2800/533 (I still have the ads). It is a Q-tec 6030 MD. Came with 350W power supply for Athlon 2000+. Its has unique drive bay locking brackets, made of green plastic. Has removable side panels. I like this case and now have three of them.

3) Originally a case for a Pentium III 866MHz on a VIA chipset motherboard. This is the slide out one. Power supply unit is type FSP-235.

Ahh yeah, #3 is super common over here. I have a P2/350 in one.

I was hoping it would have a somewhat curved front. I had the curved version as a teenager and can't seem to find any good pictures. All I have is this horrible picture from 2001 (and yes, my hard drive is on top of the case. It was the style at the time!)

The case on the right is an In-Win, I used to have one of that model. I was a huge fan of their old cases. Recently I was lucky enough to find a couple 2004 era ones new old stock for 19.00 each on ebay. Wish I still had my earlier ones though.

My circa 1998 PII machine is in a black Antec KS-280B case. I ordered it by mistake, turns out I was ahead of the trend!

I would say the Elan Vital T10 screams PII era to me. I have P166MMX in it but I am considering moving a PIII450 into it.

Hey, have these two sitting around my office. The generic one is a PII/233 and it's in one of the most singularly awful cases I've ever seen, but it is period-appropriate. 😉 The Dell is a P3/550.

Note that these are both "skinny" cases, especially the Dell, in that they're barely wider than a 5.25" drive bay. The "fat" beige cases came around later, in the P4-era before everything went black and grey. I miss the days when compact towers were actually compact.

For a 1997/1999 build, I swear by A-Open HX45 cases. HQ45 can do as well.

http://www.dansdata.com/hx45.htm

Proper PII cases are literally the MOST boring being items in the history of computing.