Not much of an answer yet but I love the oddballs myself, I recognize the "Whatever this thing techmoan's muppet is using". That's an Apricot portable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apricot_Portable). My father had one just like it (if not the same exact thing)

edit: I hope youtube is allowed. I was trying to remember the name of that Packard Bell "corner" PC, this video turned up with a bunch of other "odd" computers if you're interested in them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqyoO4eajXo

As for older luggables, you should look up the show "The Computer Chronicles", every episode is on youtube going all the way back to around '83. I've watched them all. You'll see tons of portables and funny conversations about why only power hungry users would need a 386 heheh 😊

Hey, that's a cool thread! May I interpret it as a thread about odd shaped PCs ?
If so, I have a few ideas for you! 😁 :

a)BTX form factor. Dell made a few PCs with that layout (Optiplex Desktop series ?)
The cool thing was, that PCI cards finally were nolonger "hanging" upside-down.
I mean, the component side was on the upper side (correct), just like ISA cards of old times.
This was way better for heat dissipation, also.

b)Goupil computers
#1 ???
#2 big and in red colouring, kinda like japanese PCs
#3 all-in-one
#4 mimics the japanese Sharp X68000 PC
#50 huge server monster in black (reminde me of these German ESCOM machines)
Goupil Golf. A "portable" with a huge plasma screen.

http://msx.fab.free.fr/mpc2/goupil/goupil.htm
poor translation (original was French)

c) BBC Master 128 w/ Master 512 module
This interesting machine came from Great Britain (for the young readers, a small ex-European isle).
By installing an optional co-processor board, the machine became schizophrenic and
either got an alternate 65C02 or 80186 PC personality.
It also had an odd-ball Operating System called "DOS Plus", which was CP/M-86 with built-in DOS emulation.
I mentioned it a little bit in the old PC compatibility cards thread. 😉
PC compatibility cards

d)thin clients
Successors of glass terminals. They often run on a crippled copy of WinCE and are based on various platforms.
Some of them run on x86 architecture. They usually incorporate old, reliable 2D/3D chips from the server department (ATI Rage, etc.).
Some of them include PCI slots, IDE, parallel, serial and USB.
By design, all of them have got NICs installed. Support for legacy OSes is very good (even OS/2).
Sample: HP T5700

e)late 90s/early 2000s set-top boxes
They were made for surfing the web in the living room.
More than often, they included a crippled PC mainboard.
Performance class ranged from Pentium MMX to Pentium III.
Sample. T-Online S100

Jo22 wrote:

Hey, that's a cool thread! May I interpret it as a thread about odd shaped PCs ? If so, I have a few ideas for you! :D : a)BTX […]
Show full quote

Hey, that's a cool thread! May I interpret it as a thread about odd shaped PCs ?
If so, I have a few ideas for you! 😁 :

a)BTX form factor. Dell made a few PCs with that layout (Optiplex Desktop series ?)
The cool thing was, that PCI cards finally were nolonger "hanging" upside-down.
I mean, the component side was on the upper side (correct), just like ISA cards of old times.
This was way better for heat dissipation, also.
...

Gateway also made some BTX systems, albeit for a much shorter time. On the plus side all of the Gateway BTX cases I've seen have been 100% standard BTX.

Perhaps the strangest vintage form-factor computer I have in my collection is the Amstrad PPC640.

The oldest tablet I have in my collection isn't really all that old, only from 2000 or so. Fujitsu Stylistic LT C500. Oldest tablet I know of is from 1993, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were any before that.

I also have an iMac G4, one of the more oddball design all-in-ones. But, I personally don't consider it old enough quite yet to consider it "vintage"...it's almost there though.

Ugh, BTX...one of my pet peeves with that form factor was how the case opened from the right instead of the left. Because of how my repair workbench is set up, this meant that the opened panel was facing away from me while I was sitting at the main station of the workbench.

Schneider EuroPC
- the only PC/XT with the flair of a classic "homecomputer"

Schneider TowerAT
- simply the most beautiful 286 (it also has a 386sx and a very very very rare 486sx (black) pendant)

Jo22 wrote:

d)thin clients Successors of glass terminals. They often run on a crippled copy of WinCE and are based on various platforms. Som […]
Show full quote

d)thin clients
Successors of glass terminals. They often run on a crippled copy of WinCE and are based on various platforms.
Some of them run on x86 architecture. They usually incorporate old, reliable 2D/3D chips from the server department (ATI Rage, etc.).
Some of them include PCI slots, IDE, parallel, serial and USB.
By design, all of them have got NICs installed. Support for legacy OSes is very good (even OS/2).
Sample: HP T5700

More interesting are (IMHO) systems that were direct predecessors to thin clients, as they usually have all of the features of thin clients plus are able to run a full Windows OS, usually have pretty decent integrated graphics and sound, a few expansion slots, sometimes MIDI or SCSI on-board (!), and the BIOSes are typically geared towards professional situations, i.e. with tons of options.

I have a couple of BTX machines in my office. I'm a little bit L/R dyslexic so at first I didn't notice there was anything "wrong" and what tipped me off was the fact that they're built up-side-down. 😜 I love the Amstrad PPC640/512, I really wish they'd offered a 386 with a gas-plasma display in that casing. Ah well, can't have everything.

Here's another neat one that perfectly illustrates the sort of retro-futurist design I really like:

It's a Fujitsu FM R-30FD; again 8088-based with up to 1MB RAM and some custom gfx modes. there's a bit of info about it on this page. I wish this sort of thing had gotten a little more popular. I mean, we had the iMac but that came way later and was encumbered with a bulky CRT for some years. Who wouldn't have wanted this on their desk in 1987? Look at it!

dr.zeissler wrote:

Schneider TowerAT
- simply the most beautiful 286 (it also has a 386sx and a very very very rare 486sx (black) pendant)

I got one back in the early 90's, still have it, and i couldn´t agree more.

It was priced at 233.000 Pesetas (Spain, back in the day was the full salary of two-three months), 80286 at 4 Mhz, 20 Mbs of hard disk, 1 disk drive and something like 4 MB of ram (not sure right now, maybe less and my memory is just mismatching systems), 1 XT Keyboard, a MPU 401 Crystal Sound card and 1 Quickjoy joystick with an ISA Game port card. It came with Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft Works and Msdos 5.x for Schnneider. We got also 3 books(Msdos, quick guide and a reference guide), Italia 90 and Stormovik.

One IT guy from the store helped my father setup the machine and gave some quick directions about troubleshooting it over 2-3 hours the next morning.

The insides of the machine are pretty much the same as your standar AT-XT tower, but the PSU pin-out is not AT-XT standard.

I can post some shots this weekend if someone is really interested in what the insides looks like or something.

More pics here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/94839221@N05/al … 157660715046016

TowerAT has normally 1MB Ram and 10 or 12,5 Mhz. (10Mhz is mostly the EGA Onboard Version, the 12,5 is mostly the VGA-Version).

dr.zeissler wrote:

More pics here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/94839221@N05/al … 157660715046016

TowerAT has normally 1MB Ram and 10 or 12,5 Mhz. (10Mhz is mostly the EGA Onboard Version, the 12,5 is mostly the VGA-Version).

Nice!

It has 1 MB of Ram as you said. Bios let me choose between 4Mhz, 6.25 and 12.5 Mhz. I need to find a nice CF card adapter for it/ a way to put the modified XT bios in it, the original (and rather bulky) HDD died a long time ago, so im stuck with diskettes for now.

Some shots more : https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ao6uIdEL9xH2hSpFQ0d_fFJBESzH

You can add a SCSI Controller like I did, but you can also add a formosa sc1630 and use the primary ide-interface with a cf-card and ontrack-diskmanager.
But afaik the 286 has onboard IDE too, so you don't need any other hdd-controller. I think I use a normal IDE HDD with Ontrack-Diskmanager with my 286/12,5.
I also do not use an additional VGA card, because I took out the 256KB-Vram Upgrade from my 386sx Version and put it in the 286/12,5. So i have 512K-Vram
and the Onboard ATI is a VERY good card. It's not so fast as an ET4000 but very compatible and has a great image-quality an fantastic colors and also lot's
of drivers.

It does not support EMS by chipset so you stuck to using ems286 witch means 64K ram for the mirroring and a slow ems, BUT then you can use D-Paint with
fullscreen 640/480@256colors.

Mine has a Ram-Upgrade-Card so I have about 2,5MB, a Soundblaster CT1350 with CMS-Upgrade, an MT32-Card and a Network-Card.

Doc

dr.zeissler wrote:

More pics here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/94839221@N05/al … 157660715046016

TowerAT has normally 1MB Ram and 10 or 12,5 Mhz. (10Mhz is mostly the EGA Onboard Version, the 12,5 is mostly the VGA-Version).

Impressive machine! Say, does this machine's on-board EGA require a true EGA monitor or does it also
support 50Hz/TTL monochrome monitors (Hercules, IBM MDA) ?

If not, do you know, by any chance, of any EGA-VGA converters or schematics ?
I own Hercules/CGA monitors, but I do have little experience with EGA monitors.. 😅
(Though I like EGA graphics and games. EGATrek is one of my all time favorites!)

This EGA Onboard can be switched to many different settings. Hercules/MDA is also possible.
If using hires EGA you need a very good multiscan like mine EUM1491. The ega-card can
be used up to 800x600 with 16colors!! Afaik there was a hires-driver for Dr-Halo PC-Paint...but I am not 100% sure.

i need to make some new videos for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuqw8RrcpCU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--4XmCKyPqo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YuFQbghCBM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nvu_CUTKSE

dr.zeissler wrote:

I also do not use an additional VGA card, because I took out the 256KB-Vram Upgrade from my 386sx Version and put it in the 286/12,5. So i have 512K-Vram
and the Onboard ATI is a VERY good card. It's not so fast as an ET4000 but very compatible and has a great image-quality an fantastic colors and also lot's
of drivers.

I do not use another card on top of the one that comes integrated in the machine either (My tower is the VGA version), the other card that is plugged is a MPU 401 crystal Isa card.

I´ll look into using ontrack-diskmanager as you advised, I think that i still have some Hdds of 5-8Gb somewhere that may come handy for this 🤣.

Ontrack works fine for me. As I said, I use the Onboard-video in both machines. Gemini-VC001 EGA in the 286/10 and ATI Wonder VGA in the 286/12,5. I had tested some other VGA-cards and most of them worked just fine. It was very cool to display a 640x480@16Mio-Color-TGA-Image in under 3 Seconds on a 286/10 with quickview1.03. 😀 But after all, I choose to use the original graphics-cards.

There was the Compact Compaq 's like the Presario 5528

Mate had one, was great for Lan games, nice simple thing to bring round and set up.
Terrible to upgrade, but that's a given really.

I imagine the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh would also qualify here, considering it's some sort of mutant hybrid between a laptop and an all-in-one desktop.

torindkflt wrote:

it's some sort of mutant hybrid between a laptop and an all-in-one desktop.

Aren't most all in ones really just some type of terrible laptop-desktop clusterfuck?

i486_inside wrote:

Aren't most all in ones really just some type of terrible laptop-desktop clusterfuck?

Not really, at least not the older ones that fall within the scope of this thread. Most of them use standard desktop-class computer parts, just usually modified and rearranged to fit into the design of an all-in-one form factor. In other instances, the all-in-one case itself is designed from the ground up to accept standard off-the-shelf desktop parts with no modifications necessary.

Now, a lot of modern-day all-in-one systems do tend to use laptop-style hard drives and optical drives for space-saving purposes, but they typically still use desktop-style components for everything else, just engineered to fit the form.