My case does use rails, not only to keep the drives in place, but also it's the only way that 5.25" drives can even be mounted in the case as there's no screw holes.

So I need to find more somewhere, or 3D print them.

Anyway, we know that the case is made by Intel, but what is the model?

Just in case anyone recognizes these, here's a picture of the drive rails

DankEngihn wrote:

Just in case anyone recognizes these, here's a picture of the drive rails

These are the rails, don't know what their stock is like. Might want to check.

http://www.northwesttechnical.com/index.php?m … 9e7d0fff090ad7d.

Okay so I looked through that site and found some more information on this computer.

It's an Intel Xpress server, don't know what model though. Can't find anything that looks quite like what the one I have unfortunately.

Well, the server isn't really anything that special. It's just a boring beige case with an Intel Plato motherboard. Probably if you took the SCSI controller, the DAT tape drive and the QNX tape you could turn just about any PC into an Icon server.

That video card isn't a Mach64, its an original 1997 ATI All-In-Wonder card based on the 3D Rage II+DVD chip.

Rage II is also known as Mach64 GT-B. It's a Mach64 with 3D stuff tacked on.
If it's Rage II+DVD, it's probably from late 1997 or perhaps even early 1998.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

This was possibly used as a server for the Unisys Icon computers that were pretty common in Canadian primary and middle schools […]
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This was possibly used as a server for the Unisys Icon computers that were pretty common in Canadian primary and middle schools in the 80s and early 90s. I think originally the servers were some weird 80186 proprietary based things, but I remember the server in my school was a Unisys 386 with a 1X CD-ROM drive. I didn't know they had Pentium based servers though. I remember at my school the Icons got dumped around 1995 and were were replaced by standard DX2-66s running WFWG3.11.

Very, very fond memories of using this exact computer in my high-school... probably around 1996, they taught us Word... at least from what I remember it was MS word. I distinctly remember that trackball and Unisys. I'd be interested to know what OS these ran, because from what I recall it looked Dos like. This was in a Canadian Highschool, but I remember even at the time thinking it was super old, because in the regular computer labs & library, they had brand new Pentium 75-100 machines. Although at home at the time, we had a AMD 386/40 😢

Should have been 1994. As far as I know, they were all ordered scrapped by the Canadian government in 1994. I specifically remember my school replacing them with DX2-66s in 1995. The server that these things connected to ran QNX.

DankEngihn wrote on 2019-09-19, 16:13:

I recently picked up this computer, along with a few other machines, and some misc. parts at a local computer store for 10$. I w […]
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I recently picked up this computer, along with a few other machines, and some misc. parts at a local computer store for 10$. I was mostly attracted to the case, and the tape drive. I took it home, and am only now really getting around to messing with it. I checked it worked, and I got a "NO VGA DETECTED" beep code 😒 . So I took it apart, and took some pictures documenting the process.

Sorry for the really shitty picture quality. I suck at taking pictures, and my phones camera is hot garbage.

Here's a picture of the front and back of the case. I can't really find a ton of information on the brand. Going off of what little information I could find, ICONIX seems to be a division of Unisys Canada, aimed to fulfil a standard for the Ontario Ministry of Education.

IMG_20190917_171714429.jpg
This is definitely a late-AT era case, as it has no turbo (or reset for that matter) button, and has a single sliding side panel.
IMG_20190917_171634807.jpg

One thing I know for sure is that it is HEAVY! Like, really REALLY heavy. I weighs around the same as the 19" Dell CRT's that I once had, and those were 52 pounds! 🤣

On the inside, we can immediately see the absolutely MASSIVE motherboard taking up the entire bottom of the case, and a huge drive cage with 3 hard drives in them. (I removed the IDE & SCSI cables so you could actually see the hardware inside)

IMG_20190917_171801768.jpg

Taking a closer look at the hard drives shows 2 80 GB Hitachi DeskStar's, and a full-height 3.5" 4.3 GB HP SCSI drive that sounds like a jet engine.

IMG_20190917_171813074 (1).jpg
IMG_20190917_172537251-2.jpg

This server has clearly been used well past it's day, with the two 80 GB drives having date codes of September and February of 2003. 🤣

I know it's almost impossible at this point, but was any of the software saved? All of the iCON stuff was seemingly lost, and heck even a PC that ran the server software would be cool to have been preserved.

Hi there,

In that time it was around 1987-93 I was at high school, this had these.

iCON was slow but instructional stuff was interesting, if one choose to, would pop in during lunch hour to play games etc. Trick was to get server serve faster was press one key once in awhile if the refresh is too long to respond.

The server holds a hard drive and floppy drive, typical switching PSU in a metal walls and cages with metal sheet large board under them to load stuff on it is slightly larger than desktop and taller. Think of them as intelligent terminals with color CRT roughly high resolution EGA-like with hand ball and keyboard on long table with seats. We would come in for part of the homework writing text on this iCON too.

https://www.google.com/search?q=iconix+comput … =Vlt46Zl2x5VxUM

Server box:
https://www.yergens.net/blog1/unisysburroughs … n-bionic-beaver

Cheers,

DankEngihn wrote on 2019-09-25, 18:28:

My case does use rails, not only to keep the drives in place, but also it's the only way that 5.25" drives can even be mounted in the case as there's no screw holes.

So I need to find more somewhere, or 3D print them.

Anyway, we know that the case is made by Intel, but what is the model?

Does the case still have original board and cards? I would like to see the photos of your case and boards?

I'm doing research on extrended xpress server in a large tower custom chassis made by intel as turnkey servers and other companies also used these boards in custom chassis too.
eXtended Xpress is a customizable design where you can have one, two, three and four socket 5 or 7 processors across two processor modules boards along with one or two memory expansion modules filled with FPM 72 pin simms in four sticks at a time, plugged into large i/o board.

Cheers,