Those towers designed by Luigi Colani for Vobis have individual side panels.
Too lazy to attach a pic. Just google 'Colani tower'.

Doornkaat wrote on 2023-02-03, 03:41:

Those towers designed by Luigi Colani for Vobis have individual side panels.
Too lazy to attach a pic. Just google 'Colani tower'.

Wow... that's quite a tower! Looks like they're ridiculously expensive when they show up too. 🤣

I wonder if there are any others out there?

I have one on my 486 build
See my post:
486 Multimedia dream build ( 1993/94 )

Techmedia was a computer builder company from Silicon Valley back in 1990’s
This case I think is actually for a 1st gen pentium motherboard but I am using it for my 486 build.
Techmedia designed their own computer cases.
This is a really nice case too.
It’s very heavy as it is made of thick gauge sheet metal. And it has a thick coat of paint too.
One of the nicest AT tower cases I have ever seen.

I have one You can read about the build here My Socket 7 Pentium MMX build - Updated

I have one, a grey case used for an industrial PICMG backplane and SBC. Probably dates from early 2000s (the SBC was the original one, and was Tualatin-supporting So370).

Wow, they do exist! Thanks guys!

So you'll agree this isn't something you find every day then? I need to keep my eyes open for one. I'm not sure if I would have even thought about it before now so I may even have passed one up at some point.

Rare as hen's teeth, and most likely from the very end of AT case production.

Probably industrial/rackmount cases are your best bet.

The Colani tower indeed had separate side panels but there were other cases from Vobis as well - I used to own one back in the day and made a thread about it not long after I joined vogons 8 years ago 😅

I just found this.

Wow, another nice one! Is that fake-floppy 5 1/4 drive bay cover at least removable? It almost looks like it's part of the case. 🤣

I have never seen any of these before.

Or any Vobis computers for that matter.

If you want real easy tinker access, lemme ruin your life by telling you about the unicorns with a hinged flip up panel like the hood of a car. Mostly lie flat desktop format. Horrible for ventilation too, you don't want many watts in most of them (i.e. 233MMX and below)

I saw a fat squat minitower AT some long while ago with a case badge from some cheeky buggers calling themselves "Com-Pac", sold with a P100 in on an FX board to give an idea of dating, but no idea who made the case, seemed generic, but higher end generic.

I think some Dells had that style, but they were between early pentium and jumping on the ATX train early, so a year of them at most. Also Acers had them longer, but they were doing this weird halfass ATX thing with ATish ATX style 3.3V power and power management and I had doubts about whether they were really AT cases, soft power buttons, weird PSUs. I had managed to replace a failed board in one with a baby AT board, but it took matching the dimensions close.

edit: this one appears to have panels, not sure the store either has stock or is good to deal with, but maybe the part number turns up elsewhere https://baber.com/cases/mpe_md59.htm

I have a Techmedia brand AT tower case with removable sides.

There's some pics of it in this thread:
K6-2+ 450, Asus VX97 Build - updated now to include some 430TX vs. 430VX benchmarks

I guess the all-in-one case cover design was cheaper. I had an ATX case like this and it was very annoying to reassemble. This design is not practical with very large cases though.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-03, 23:58:

I think some Dells had that style, but they were between early pentium and jumping on the ATX train early, so a year of them at most. Also Acers had them longer, but they were doing this weird halfass ATX thing with ATish ATX style 3.3V power and power management and I had doubts about whether they were really AT cases, soft power buttons, weird PSUs. I had managed to replace a failed board in one with a baby AT board, but it took matching the dimensions close.

Oh man, I forgot about those Acers! Now that I think about it, I might actually have one of those in my garage!! I was given a gray colored Acer tower from like 1995 and it was partially disassembled. I think I have the original mouse and keyboard for it as well. It is probably something similar to AT... but I can't remember how the case opens. I think I eventually found all of the parts of the tower itself to reassemble that, but it has been a "future project" for ~3 years so I haven't looked too closely at it.

EDIT: Pretty sure the one I have in the garage is like this...
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/com … pire_from_1995/
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/acer-a … dows-1956480113

...

Ahhh... just found this picture. It's probably not AT then unless they did some different versions of this tower.
https://imgur.com/gallery/G2KAZVF

Just found this ad for one too... 🤣

What were they thinking mashing two different paragraphs\lists together on the side? Ah, '90s advertising...