First post, by jheronimus
- Rank
- Oldbie
We all know that the first ATX motherboard is Intel Advanced/ATX aka Thor. Intel didn't sell that motherboard to customers directly, thus the magazines never reviewed this product, and even Intel's website didn't mention Thor at the time.
But what was the first ATX case? Gateway and other large OEMs bought Thor from Intel and made their own systems, but what about smaller companies (after all by 1995 Intel made more motherboards than Asus or even Compaq)?
It's not a very well known fact that Intel also made own cases and sold them to system builders. They've done so with LPX and AT machines, and since those were not retail products, there is no information about them on Intel's website. The only source of information I've managed to find is this page. There are 9 Intel-made cases listed here, and the only ATX option is an unnamed "Intel Tower ATX".
I might get one in a couple of days, but in the meantime I am wondering — is this the first ATX case ever? My specific unit looks the same, but it originally came with a Pentium 2 (the case on the picture also seems to have either a Pentium II or Pentium MMX bage). It's a bit odd for a Slot 1 machine — for example, it doesn't have a place for a fan near the the CPU (and the Slot 1 CPUs don't really get cooled by the PSU fan). They also only have two 3.5" bays, so there can only be one HDD installed. They also look like contemporary "reversed" cases like DEC Celebris series, HP Vectra/NetServer and so on — the PSU lays on the bottom, the drives are also on the bottom, so the case isn't meant to be kept under the table. I'll make sure to post some photos once I (hopefully get the case).
What do you think? Does anyone have any info on Intel cases or an idea of what could be an earliest ATX case you could get from a computer shop or a small OEM builder?