gar4o555 wrote on 2019-01-18, 10:54:

Hi everyone. I am looking for more info on this case, pic attached. It might as well be a clone, or just a cheap old case, but […]
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Hi everyone.
I am looking for more info on this case, pic attached.
It might as well be a clone, or just a cheap old case, but my first ever PC was in a case, with a front like this, so it has some santimental value to me. I am looking forward to rebuilding my first ever PC so I am actively looking to buy one like this.

Has anyone ever seen a case like this?
Webp.net-compress-image (1).jpg

Hi, I know that your post is oldish, was there no reply?
Did you ever find out the brand of that case?
I have one (pic attached), and was looking for info online and couldn't find much. Brand could be "ACS Computer", according to a similar front panel I found on eBay.

I'm also looking for a chassis name. I saw this on Twitter (posted by Jesse Petrilla)recently and I'm pretty sure it's the model of chassis I had growing up. I'd love to get one again, but it would be helpful to know the manufacturer... maybe, hah.

I have recently been able to determine that CTI with US operations in Dallas and CTI Europe were major distributors of that style of case. However, since almost nobody knows this, very few of them are listed as CTI cases.

Thank you very much! That doesn't surprise me that no one knows the makes of most of these old chassis, but at least it's one extra bit of info I can try searching with.

Has anyone ever seen this case before? It showed up on eBay today and I instantly fell in love with it, but I waited too long and someone else quickly bought it. I've never seen this model before in my life and there doesn't seem to be any other pictures of one on the entire internet (until today) so I'm guessing it's extremely rare. Really bummed about losing out on this one, it's so beautiful!

I can only find sign of two "Comtrade" computers for sale, this was one of the two :] only findable by misspelling the name and counting on Google doing OCR on all images - if you image search "coNtrade pc commputer" google shows same picture linking to ebay vintage section 😀
Other one "COMTRADE Express Desktop" is listed in US so it might have been small US company from ~286 era. Case looks full vendor custom.
Afaik nothing to do with Kosowo company established in 1992.

I am wondering if it's another iteration of CTI, because they started out in the 70s as Computer Time Inc, selling dial in time on mainframes, then by late 80s had pivoted into the case market with a line of the [IIII] front cases, and although at time of those cases I can't find out what they were calling themselves but their numbers and address were same as 70s. But then by 90s there was a Computer Traders Inc in same general Dallas area, also abbreviating to CTI but I can't link them that closely to the previous CTI... anyway Computer Traders Inc would also shorten to Comtrade.

Nothing specific on the case but Comtrade go back to the 286 era (plenty of hits on Google Books - ads, pics & system reviews). Also...

https://web.archive.org/web/19971008121040/ht … //comtrade.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/19970703162442/ht … omtrade-pc.com/