RandomStranger wrote on 2020-12-21, 08:10:

Once I've seen a really neat case at my co-worker's. It was by volume about as big as some of the smaller pre-built SFF PCs, somewhere between the Thinkcentre M72e and the Esprimo 5615, closer to the smaller one, but it could fit a standard uATX motherboard with all the full height expansion cards, a full size 5.25" drive, two 3.5" drives and a standard SFX PSU.

I'd really like something like that for my main PIII build, but every case I finde in that size either don't accept full height expansion cards, enough drives (especially full size 5.25"), only accept ITX board, or substantially bigger. The smaller ones are about Vectra Vei8 DT size which is about right in depth, but because that air channel thing between the PSU and the CPU, it's about over 5cm too wide. I bought the case of an Veriton D461, which is almost the right size, only a little bulkier from the front, but about 10cm too long, and has a bigger non-standard PSU which also makes it a little wide. I don't know how that unknown manufacturer made that case so unrealistically small, but I'd like to have a similar one. And the case had nothing on it which would help me identify.

Iv always liked the old Compaq Evo P4 cases. Matx in the oldschool horizantal position and pretty much standard, just had to hack up the front IO IIRC EDIT: Just go to your favored eretailer and search for matx cases. Any super min towers and such compatible with with full height cards should come up if you narrow it down further. Coolermaster used to make a really nifty $50 case that was matx, supported full height cards, a full height 5.25, and second 5.25 I think and a 3.5.

I just found something promising on a local auction site:

It's not as stylish as my co-worker's case, but the size should be very close. Could you help me identify the case?

EDIT:
The only thing I'm currently concerned about is this:

It's really dodgy from this angle, I'm not sure if the optical drive hangs over the AGP slot blocking me from using a full-height card there.

EDIT 2:
And this is the case that started this quest of mine for a similar one:

I think it would clear a Geforce 3 or 4 no problem. Worst case you could get a low profile AGP card in Geforce 4 MX form no problem.
EDIT: That case is beautiful and space efficient for a P3 build.

I think that Avance L12 (or L12B) is as small as it can get, because it is literally as tall as MicroATX mainboard and uses no extra space (except for power plug) and as wide as normal size PCI card. (Expansion cards cannot be too wide though, after plugging Voodoo 2 you have no space left for the SLI connection cable)

Banana and Windows XP box to scale.

It uses SFX power supply, which is installed far inside the case and connected with an extension cord. This case has a bay for laptop DVD drive and another bay, originally meant for a set of additional USB connectors, which perfectly fits laptop floppy drive after a small modification (removing little metal pieces)

It is a pretty modern case as it has USB 3 connectors. I bought 2 such cases as old stock from OEM system manufacturer and AFAIK it was probably mainly sold to system builders, it even has a little empty rectangle in front panel which was meant for OEM logo. Unfortunately looks like this case is no longer manufactured (or at least you can't buy it anywhere, but it is on manufacturer website http://www.avance.com.tw/ProductDetail.aspx?s=14)

NIce one, but I can't see it available anywhere.
Btw I'm not hellbent on SFX PSU, TFX is just as good, I don't rule out non-standard form factors as long as the quality is decent and the case accepts standard uATX mobo.

I bought that P4 PC in my previous comment. It's just 11$ shipping included and claimed to work (2.4Ghz P4, 512MB RAM, 60GB HDD) so even if the 5.25" drive bay hangs over the AGP slot and I can't use full size graphics cards there, for that price it'll be good for something.

My first question however still stands. If someone can identify the case in my previous comment EDIT2, it'd be great.

adalbert wrote on 2020-12-21, 12:09:

It uses SFX power supply, which is installed far inside the case and connected with an extension cord. This case has a bay for laptop DVD drive and another bay, originally meant for a set of additional USB connectors, which perfectly fits laptop floppy drive after a small modification (removing little metal pieces)

I just happened to discover this old thread, and loved the suggestion of this case - mATX motherboard and full height PCI cards in a case that's actually smaller than many ITX cases seems like the holy grail to me! I guess the only real negative is that it seems to lack the headroom above the PCI slots to use any kind of graphics card that would need a power connector that faces outward ...

Amazingly enough, eBuyer in the UK currently have these cases on sale very cheaply (but with no PSU), so I've ordered one to be a new, compact, home for my old Athlon II XP era machine.

I'm intrigued how you got the laptop floppy drive working in the desktop system?

I've actually been wondering about stripping down an external USB floppy drive, which seem to use what look like standard slim laptop floppy mechanisms, to fit slim 3.5" bays. Particularly appealing as the AMD 790 chipset board I am thinking of here (and also a VIA Epia board I have in a Morex ITX case with a 3.5" slim bay) don't have legacy floppy controllers, but I would like to fit with internal floppy drives ... I guess it would need the front fascia either very carefully cutting down from the USB enclosure, or 3D printing, though.

I put an AMD AM2+ board, think it's a 790 in a eMachines T6000 series case, and that had no onboard FDC so used an IDE LS-120 drive. Some late laptops seem to use IDE for floppy, so might be possible to rig a unicorn combo of drive that fits and speaks to the board thru IDE.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-05-31, 18:44:

I put an AMD AM2+ board, think it's a 790 in a eMachines T6000 series case, and that had no onboard FDC so used an IDE LS-120 drive. Some late laptops seem to use IDE for floppy, so might be possible to rig a unicorn combo of drive that fits and speaks to the board thru IDE.

Interesting! I think I did actually have an LS-120 drive back in the day, but obviously now long gone ... I can't remember if they shows up in the BIOS simply as an IDE removable storage type device, or (also) as a floppy that can be an A: drive? I know the VIA Epia, at least, will map a USB-FDD as an A: drive.

It does look like slim laptop bay size LS120 drives that would fit this case do exist, but they do seem very hard to find, and expensive! (the only eBay sellers I can find are in the US, and list absolutely ridiculous shipping costs to the UK).

Ah it's a 785 board M4A785-M from Asus... on that one, it recognised LS-120 in BIOS as an A: drive, BIOS code must still be there even if the FDC wasn't, and I have successfully booted a DOS 6.2 disk on it. I think you have to turn USB legacy support on to boot a USB floppy on most systems. I've done that too, but can't remember much detail. Compaq used LS-120s in laptops, but yes, rare and spendy.

Wow that's great to see that the Avance L12A is back!
Last year I decided to track one down in the UK and bought a Zoostorm base unit which uses the case, which was obviously in a school before.
Having used it now I do think the PSU location is just an afterthought and not fun to work on, but it's definitely the smallest space you can fit an mATX board and cdrom/floppy drive.

The LS120 in slim form factor is somewhat tough to find, there weren't many to begin with but also because most people can't test them. It seems they get burned up pretty often because they use a laptop IDE optical drive style connector but it's a totally different pinout. Even Adrian's Digital Basement burned one on video getting caught out by that 🙁

If your motherboard doesn't have a floppy drive interface it'll most likely support a USB floppy - you can now get cheap little laptop floppy > USB converter boards called the UF001F. That should work.
If it does have floppy interface, laptop floppy to regular floppy style cables can be found easily from the Optiplex sff machines that had floppy drives.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-05-31, 21:18:

Wow that's great to see that the Avance L12A is back!
Last year I decided to track one down in the UK and bought a Zoostorm base unit which uses the case, which was obviously in a school before.
Having used it now I do think the PSU location is just an afterthought and not fun to work on, but it's definitely the smallest space you can fit an mATX board and cdrom/floppy drive.

My L12 arrived from eBuyer today. It's really dramatic how much smaller it is than a normal mATX case!

However, a few little gotchas I hadn't anticipated ...

I was expecting there would be a kettle lead extension supplied to reach from a normal socket on the back to the PSU mount at the front, as I've seen with plenty of ITX cases - but actually it is just a hole for one to be mounted. Looking at a video from an OEM that uses this case (rather randomly about replacing the PSU fan, which suggests the ones they're supplied with can be problematic ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J14jJlMaHBg&t=425s) it seems that its intended to be used with a PSU that has a permanently wired mains cable. I've never seen SFX supplies like that available on their own, and I'd ordered a BeQuiet one with a normal socket. So I might be facing some Dremel work to the bottom bracket? Also, the panel mount C13 to C14 extensions seem both difficult to find and quite expensive ...

The design does look a bit different to those shown online too, with a rather odd CPU fan shroud where other photos show a hard drive mounting point. This has a little front\back wiggle room, but I guess I'll be taking out.

The same OEM who had the video have posted a copy of the assembly manual as a PDF, which is helpful in getting my head around it: https://support.punchtechnology.co.uk/hc/en-u … 12-20150102.pdf

But what seemed like an extremely cheap case is now seeming less so! Still, I am sold on how much smaller an mATX system it allows!

I'm trying to talk myself into a use case for one of these Aria cases https://www.anandtech.com/show/2147/2 because I can get one locally for fair price.

I could swear I was almost doing a "potty dance" over not having another compact mATX for something 3 months back, but damned if I know what it was now. I think it was probably HTPC oriented case lust. However, I just got an Acer small form factor box and an i5-3570 to stick in it which will be quite grunty and adequate, and super hard to beat for size, so I think I instantly forgot.

I have unused intel mATX that can take a quad core2, may also have been thinking about an AM2 board with a Phenom in it, or was I thinking of the s754 mATX or a socket A build??? I dunno.

Here is my AM3 Athlon II system rebuilt into the little L12 case. It was ... Quite a lot of work. But mainly because I was determined to use that slim 3.5" drive bay for a floppy!

It is pretty busy in there!

Sure enough a generic USB floppy popped open revealed a standard slim floppy drive, but with a direct USB connection, ideal for this motherboard that lacks a floppy controller. It was a good fit into the slim bay, apart from the fact there were three stamped catches clearly designed to hold a half length card reader type device in the bay. These took quite a lot of grinding with a cutting disc in a mini drill to get rid of! There weren't then any mounting holes that fitted, so I drilled some 2.5mm holes behind the end of the drive, tapped them M.3 and screwed in some plastic stand offs to act as a back stop! Some duct tape stops it pulling forward. Like I said, a lot of effort ...

I did 3D print some slim floppy front fascias, but the clip designs don't quite fit, and the first one snapped. I'll leave it open for now ... And for now the USB cable just trails out through an open card slot and plugs into a normal socket - one day I'll get around to cutting off the plug and wiring on a motherboard header.

Still, I think it's worth it for how small this mATX system now is!

thats hard. old cases like that are very rare. No new cases are like this at all.

Just picked up a pair of VIA PCI USB cards today with the 6212 on and most of those seem to have an internal USB port, so that would be the lazy way to plug in the USB floppy, or other USB device used internal. May not find one that plays nice on your board though Which USB 2.0 cards for old motherboards they seem a bit variable in build quality and compatibility.

(Come to think of it I may try using one of these to internalize USB wifi, dangling dongles always get unintentionally beat to crap)

(Edit: heh, also got one of those USB SATA adapters for transfers, so the above and that enable "Shittiest possible way to install SSD" 🤣 )