HanSolo wrote on 2022-02-16, 00:09:

Some weeks ago I bought a soundcard and chatted with the seller about old computers. He told me that he still has his old Pentiu […]
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Some weeks ago I bought a soundcard and chatted with the seller about old computers.
He told me that he still has his old Pentium 3-systems that he built into some even older slimline Escom-cases. Escom was a computer company here in Germany and in the time of 386 they already had nice black cases. Their slimline desktop cases had the cards horizontally in Riser-cards and I wondered how he managed to make the P3-systems fit. So he sent me some photos.

One is a 1 Ghz P3 in a Socket 370 AT-board, the other a 800 Mhz in a Slot 1 AT-board with everything but the kitchen sink installed (VGA, Sound, LAN, USB, Firewire, SCSI). All card are low-profile and he modded the backplates to make it all fit in the slimline-case. Both are still running Windows XP.

I think this is pretty amazing:
EscomPentium_1.jpg EscomPentium_2.jpg
EscomPentium_3.jpg EscomPentium_4.jpg
(Photos used with permission)

That dude had two black ESCOM pizza boxes and he modded them to low profile systems?
(I'm proud and happy I found a beige one that won't boot recently...)
Can't quite make up my mind whether that's awesome or a sacrilege.
My hat is off to the technical achievement, though.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-17, 23:37:

That dude had two black ESCOM pizza boxes and he modded them to low profile systems? (I'm proud and happy I found a beige one th […]
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HanSolo wrote on 2022-02-16, 00:09:

Some weeks ago I bought a soundcard and chatted with the seller about old computers. He told me that he still has his old Pentiu […]
Show full quote

Some weeks ago I bought a soundcard and chatted with the seller about old computers.
He told me that he still has his old Pentium 3-systems that he built into some even older slimline Escom-cases. Escom was a computer company here in Germany and in the time of 386 they already had nice black cases. Their slimline desktop cases had the cards horizontally in Riser-cards and I wondered how he managed to make the P3-systems fit. So he sent me some photos.

One is a 1 Ghz P3 in a Socket 370 AT-board, the other a 800 Mhz in a Slot 1 AT-board with everything but the kitchen sink installed (VGA, Sound, LAN, USB, Firewire, SCSI). All card are low-profile and he modded the backplates to make it all fit in the slimline-case. Both are still running Windows XP.

I think this is pretty amazing:
EscomPentium_1.jpg EscomPentium_2.jpg
EscomPentium_3.jpg EscomPentium_4.jpg
(Photos used with permission)

That dude had two black ESCOM pizza boxes and he modded them to low profile systems?
(I'm proud and happy I found a beige one that won't boot recently...)
Can't quite make up my mind whether that's awesome or a sacrilege.
My hat is off to the technical achievement, though.

Yes, hard to say 😀 I would love to have such a tiny system but wouldn't have the heart to do this myself... 'Today' I have to add.
Because apart from what we think about it today: he built this when those P3-systems were up to date and at that time people were just dumping all this old stuff. The Escom-cases are from 1993 and the modding is from the early 2000s. At that time I probably also wouldn't give a f*ck about leaving a case that I like in it's original state and not use it.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-02-16, 00:09:

At that time I probably also wouldn't give a f*ck about leaving a case that I like in it's original state and not use it.

😀 You have to build that system you have got in mind, HanSolo. You just said it yourself. Get the board you want and start building.

Wasn't that the time when everyone started to build his computer into whatever "case" he considered to be cool? Beer cases, tool boxes, your neighbour's cat?
How was that called? Oh wait, case modding.

Nah, you're remembering wrong, it was a quadcopter that someone built into a cat.

Uhh, my fault.
Flying catcopter, he? Very useful since it always drops on its feet.

Some cats have 10+ lifes it may seem... but landing on their (own) feet, not so much:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTVOK2yvbBM

bestemor wrote on 2022-03-20, 20:27:

Some cats have 10+ lifes it may seem... but landing on their (own) feet, not so much:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTVOK2yvbBM

Now, I may not be the predominant authority on cat psychology but only a local one, but I'm rather positive that Orville would have approved. He can finally hunt those darn smug, elusive birds on equal terms.
And, as far as cat content goes, we've all seen worse.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030605111741/ht … n.com/gray.html
Haven't we?!?

(This thread isn't meant to stay on topic, is it? *looking left and right in a paranoid fashion*)

Well, even so, perhaps best to put the cat back in the bag, and focus more on other 'cases' from now on.
(personally I'd love to get my hands on a desktop friendly beige one, that also takes ATX mobo's without the need for any 'surgery')

I got one like that as a Pentium II system by Seanix some years ago. That was when it was all junk though so it's parts are scattered now. Think I'm gonna be building the GA-5AX, K6-2/3+ and Voodoo3 into it at some future point in time.

My rig is weird, it's not era specific.

I kept my IBM Aptiva Pentium III system I originally had for Glide (in the 2000's) and 98SE was still somewhat usable. PIII 500, 256MB, TNT2 & Voodoo 3 3500 I could swap between(I couldn't get anything else to work, very disappointed as kid, realized a decade later the old GPU driver was installed in safemode. So upset 🤣). Sometimes if my main PC died, I'd use it for a bit.
Later in the 2010's, I had to RMA the MoBo on my main PC, so I fired the old one again. It needed a lot of upgrades to be useful. Ended up just doing tests with various parts.
Found cheap RAM, ripped through a dozen old videocards (they were super cheap at the time, not much interest in that market). Tried to OC everything.

Eventually someone gave me a box of old PC parts, long after I got my main rig back up and running, so I found an old case and switched over to one of the two Asus P2B-B boards, installed XP and had a decent dual core retro-modern system. Maxed the RAM, switched the old 8GB drive for bigger IDE drives.
The best GPU I could get working in AGP was the FX5950 vacuum cleaner, so that's in there still. The 6000's wouldn't work, they need AGP4/8x, and this one is 2x.
I did run Skyrim from Steam on XP with a PCI 6200, but it killed the card 🤣

Eventually I set it back to Windows 98SE because I found most games that ran in XP, ran on 8 (now 11) with a little effort. But anything 16bit or DOS, wouldn't. Then I found a proper era-case, and made some other changes.

Specs:

Case: Antec Performance 880
Front: Bitfenix Recon Fan Controller, DVD R/W, Floppy drive
Motherboard: Asus P2B-D
CPU: x2 Pentium III 550Mhz
RAM: 4x256MB SD (1GB)
Audio: BTC 1817DS Opti ISA 16
HDD: Kingstone 120Gb SSD (converted into IDE, in a 3.5 shell)
NIC: Dlink DL1000 100Mb Ethernet

(Fan controller on the front to better manage the case fans and temperatures.)

Peripherals:
Microsoft Precision Wheel I just got working, 10$ from a pawn shop
Microsoft Precision Pro Joystick my friend gave me, I used to own the same one but the handle had to much play from using it too much.
Old G15 Keyboard from 2008 (no drivers in 98SE, but it has 2x USB 1.1 ports and acts as a hub, incredibly useful with only 2 USB ports on the mainboard)
Random "gaming" mouse.
Dollar store headphones.

edit:
Todo:
Round IDE cables for better cable management.
PCI USB card so I can use the front headers. I might actually have Firewire card with a USB port somewhere.

Dustinslab wrote on 2022-03-15, 18:53:

Doornkaat wrote on 2022-03-15, 17:31:

Even if they didn't read the comments: Those people do not understand that an open standard that allowed for add on cards and various upgrades (including the mainboard in the case!) played a big part in making IBM's PC a smashing success. It is normal to modify and upgrade your PC. You were supposed to!😄

That is a great point of view! Never even thought of that. I will use that one. 😁

Spread the good word! 😉

Hi there, new to the forums. This is the first retro pc I built from scratch, everything went smoothly so very happy with it. It's perfect for Windows 95/98 games and late era DOS games. I was mainly inspired by this video from Phil: https://youtu.be/wd9lQ8o_NKI to build it.

Motherboard: MSI MS-6163 Pro
CPU: Pentium iii 1ghz, 100mhz FSB
Graphics: Asus Geforce 4 Ti 4200 AGP 8x 128MB
Voodoo 2 8MB
Sound: Sound Blaster Live! SB0060
ESS AudioDrive 1869f
RAM: 1 x 256MB
LAN:Realtek 8139D
HDD: 40GB Hitachi Deskstar 7200rpm
Optical drive: Emprex 16x DVD-RW
Floppy: Alps Electric 1.44MB
PSU: Corsair 350W

Built for eBay. This is "Strongtower". You guys were a big help.

The goodwill branch i bought this from didn't ship it properly and broke the front panel. Hope you like my slot cover and JB weld fix.

This was my first time ever working with an AWE64 and I must say, it's the best sound card I've ever used.

Only part I replaced was the GPU, it came with a Diamond FireGL 1k which was underpowered for 3D gaming. I think that's a workstation card?

Pentium II 333
256MB SDRAM
ATi Rage 128 16MB AGP
AWE64
64GB SanDisk SSD w/ IDE converter

That's a familiar case.... A local Dutch IT business called 'Switch' used these housings as well for their Pentium III systems, we used them during college.
Different front panel, without the chrome, and narrow, hard to press power/reset button.

APT97 wrote on 2022-04-14, 19:36:

IMG_20220414_192733.jpg IMG_20220414_192417.jpg Motherboard: MSI MS-6163 Pro CPU: Pentium iii 1ghz, 100mhz FSB Graphics: Geforce […]
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IMG_20220414_192733.jpg
IMG_20220414_192417.jpg
Motherboard: MSI MS-6163 Pro
CPU: Pentium iii 1ghz, 100mhz FSB
Graphics: Geforce 4 Ti 4200 AGP 8x 128MB
Voodoo 2 8MB
Sound: Sound Blaster Live! SB0060
ESS AudioDrive 1868f
RAM: 1x256MB
LAN:Realtek 8139D
HDD: 40GB Hitachi Deskstar 7200rpm
ODD: Emprex 16x DVD-RW
FDD: Mitsumi
PSU: Chieftec 230W

Thanks to this video from PhilsComputerLab: https://youtu.be/wd9lQ8o_NKI for inspiring me to build this PC.

this is a highly specced P3 era PC in an innocent looking case 😀

This build is supposed to be a first generation P4, matched with the first GPU with programable shaders. The parts were available in May 2001.

- Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz
- Asus P4T rev.1.07 - intel 850 AGP/PCI chipset, supporting Dual Channel RDRAM 800MHz w/ 3.2Gb/s of memory bandwith
- 512MB RDRAM PC800 @800MHz effective frequency
- Elsa Gladiac 920 - nVidia GeForce 3
- Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 SB0100
- Seagate 40GB 7200rpm
- Sony CD-RW

More pics

Great pictures and nice looking system. I like the specs-sheet on the bay cover 👍

I never had an early P4 but I did have an Elsa Gladiac 920 in a i815e build back in 2001 😀

You should mark those images as mature or NSFW.

<3