I apologize if this question comes up often.
I'm getting ready to do some vintage builds... 8088 through 486. And I'd like to find a modern case or at least new old stock that will accept an AT motherboard, preferably something small or slimline desktop shaped.
Can anyone suggest a good case for this?
I guess I could redrill the motherboard plate in an atx case also. But I'm not sure how problematic that will be.
Anything modern with not have an AT compatible mounting plate and most likely won't even have slots for floppy drives (most new cases are diskless).
AT cases will be pricey these days but the early ATX cases were backwards compatible with AT mounting and some even had an AT backplate you had to punch out to put the ATX bezels on.
Collector of old computers, hardware, and software
Not just in the early days. Pretty much any babyAT board will fit in pretty much any ATX case. All you need is the AT keyboard plate. All you lose is the topmost expansion slot (#8) if used on the AT board.
I have a set of motherboard trays from AOpen bigtower cases that I use for most of my builds. All my regular babyAT boards fit on them, but even a massive Micronics full-AT board that doesn't fit in any of my AT cases (even one bigtower) fits nicely onto one of these ATX trays.
Floppy drives etc might be an issue, but only a few hip&trendy cases are totally legacy-free. Even my Fractal Design mITX case still has a single 5.25" external bay, and anything that would hold a full (baby)AT board will sport multiple 5.25" and 3.5" bays.
Another option is the SBC platform.. You can easily mount a backplane in nearly any case that has PCI slots available, then pop in a SBC 8088 - 486 or even faster. 8088 SBC's can be built cheap, and faster SBC's are all over eBay for pretty fair prices. For a dedicated case to properly house SBC's, you can search for a variety of IPC (industrial PC) case offerings. They come in anything from PC/104 single board, 2 slot, 3 slot book size, and even all the way to standard 19" EIA rackmount.
Yeah it's discussed often. Long story short, you can put a Baby AT in a full ATX case. You have the backplate issue you mention, plus you lose access to the 8th expansion slot (the one closest to the keyboard connector). You have to modify the front power switch also if you want it to work. If you use an ATX power supply and a converter, you replace it with one that latches on/off (recommend E-Switch TL2285EE) rather than opening the circuit as soon as you let go. If you go with an AT power supply you have to adapt the case to accommodate the much larger switch. Finally, an ATX case has useless USB/audio ports on the front, but you may find cases where those are conveniently covering up a second 3.5" drive bay and can be cut away and the floppy drive put there.
There's someone on here who modified a MicroATX case to fit a Baby AT pretty perfectly, but with the loss of more expansion slots. A full ATX case ends up with some empty vertical space.
