I'm seeing all these mid-tower and full tower cases...

Whatever happened to desktop cases? I know they existed for custom builds, not just Dells/Gateways/HPs...

Youre right, i renamed the topic.

In Poland for some unexplained reason the top of the line PC case in ~1994-1997 was something like this

ass shot of big tower version from gaming magazine:

here ATX version in better quality:

similar to the one from this build https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tp … 108251/page-181 wrong color, non textured sidebars, no frequency display, looks cheap
or this Just completed a 700MHz PIII LAN companion for the "Witch Doctor". wrong color, non textured sidebars, but definitely same metal stamping, only faceplate is different.

It was commonly called "Green" or "Green Power" (due to printed green text) and usually came with Enlight 200W PSU. Price wise it was ~2-3x more expensive than ordinary cheap cases.
Sadly no idea who made it, nor why it was so special. I have my suspicion someone simply decided to charge more for it due to nice looking green frame 😀

arncht wrote:

Youre right, i renamed the topic.

I wasn't complaining... 🙁

Basically i am not interested in the desktop cases, and the most of the images from me.

rasz_pl wrote:

In Poland for some unexplained reason the top of the line PC case in ~1994-1997 was something like this […]
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In Poland for some unexplained reason the top of the line PC case in ~1994-1997 was something like this

[...]

It was commonly called "Green" or "Green Power" (due to printed green text) and usually came with Enlight 200W PSU. Price wise it was ~2-3x more expensive than ordinary cheap cases.
Sadly no idea who made it, nor why it was so special. I have my suspicion someone simply decided to charge more for it due to nice looking green frame 😀

A Taiwanese friend of me in Berlin back then, who operated an PC import export shop told me that many of his customers from the former Soviet bloc had to purchase their PCs in Germany because of import regulations (that fell only years after the communist regimes) that made direct import from ROC (Taiwan) difficult to impossible.

It was also his shop where I saw the first "green power" systems in about 1993. When I asked him what "green power" means he just shrugged his shoulders and said, well its just the looks.
At least these looked way better than these retarded 7-segment displays 😀

rasz_pl wrote:

In Poland for some unexplained reason the top of the line PC case in ~1994-1997 was something like this

Are you sure about the date? The turbo is interesting on an atx case, is there any atx mainboard with turbo?
Anyway, the atx released in 1995, but it was very uncommon until the p2 (1997).

Hamby wrote:

I'm seeing all these mid-tower and full tower cases...

Whatever happened to desktop cases? I know they existed for custom builds, not just Dells/Gateways/HPs...

One of these days maybe I will make a collection of pics and start a desktop case thread. Posting this in case someone with more energy than me gets the idea to do it first. 😀

retardware wrote:

A Taiwanese friend of me in Berlin back then, who operated an PC import export shop told me that many of his customers from the former Soviet bloc had to purchase their PCs in Germany because of import regulations (that fell only years after the communist regimes) that made direct import from ROC (Taiwan) difficult to impossible.

That could explain events pre 1989, but Poland was the first one to break out from under ZSRR occupation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989. We had free trade and open borders from 1990 onward (and Mexico level <$1/hour salaries leading to Western corporations taking over whole factories for peanuts).

arncht wrote:

rasz_pl wrote:

In Poland for some unexplained reason the top of the line PC case in ~1994-1997 was something like this

Are you sure about the date? The turbo is interesting on an atx case, is there any atx mainboard with turbo?
Anyway, the atx released in 1995, but it was very uncommon until the p2 (1997).

First two (and huge ass tower) are the case I am talking about (AT, frequency display). I only added ATX variant pictures because they are better quality and clearly same manufacturer. Found another picture, source is 2017 OLX ~"giving away old computer for free" classifieds ad:

Bing image search found another variant with AT lock instead of display, source was 2017 "PC 486 DX in Teile" https://picclick.de/PC-486-DX-in-Teile-162677532164.html:

I also found proof they were unreasonably expensive, Warsaw open air computer market February 1998 price summary composed by one of the pc mags http://i60.tinypic.com/23kz2ft.jpg You can divide prices by 3.5 for $. Ordinary mini tower PC case $20-30, "LUX Green" mini $70. Midi $30-43, "LUX Green" midi $86.

PS:I have about 10KG of pre 2000 PC mags in the basement, but in my brilliance to save on storage space I went thru them 20 years ago ripping out all the ads 😉 🙁. Thats why Im scraping by with photos from classifieds 🙁

I also found some more examples of cases sold in Poland/Germany in September 1996 by Vobis http://www.wykop.pl/ramka/3682653/gazetka-vob … snia-1996-roku/
Vobis again June 1997 https://pokazywarka.pl/900c1t-2/
and finally boring ATX era Summer 1999 https://pokazywarka.pl/900c1t-2/

If they created an atx version, probably this is a case family - the 97-98 can be sure, for the earlier hit, look for more mags (eg pc mag on the books.google.com). I was also surprised, than the inwin a500 was there in the 1996 pc roundups.

i have two empty cases - they are very nice, but i dont know the exact year. somebody? what I know:

Yeong Yang - 1999/2000? it comes with a bx6

Unknown brand (Chieftec like), manufactured in 2002, with 2003/2004 inside.

i want to use my inwin a500 for the pentium mmx instead of the p3.

another question 😀 is this the original version of the atc100 (from 1999)?

you guys find the ugliest cases

arncht wrote:

i have two empty cases - they are very nice, but i dont know the exact year. somebody? what I know:

Yeong Yang - 1999/2000? it comes with a bx6

20180825_171853.jpg

I found one of these with an early rev P2B and PII 400 inside. That could give this case a 1998 build date. From memory there might be a date mark stamped inside the front panel?

arncht wrote:

i have two empty cases - they are very nice, but i dont know the exact year. somebody? what I know: […]
Show full quote

i have two empty cases - they are very nice, but i dont know the exact year. somebody? what I know:

Yeong Yang - 1999/2000? it comes with a bx6

20180825_171853.jpg

Unknown brand (Chieftec like), manufactured in 2002, with 2003/2004 inside.

20180914_210920.jpg

i want to use my inwin a500 for the pentium mmx instead of the p3.

the first case looks the same as the case the PC my father bought in 1997 had, it was a Pentium 133 with a green full atx motherboard (it had an Intel chipset, maybe it was an Intel board?), I haven't seen one of these cases since I last saw that PC in around 2002, but if not exactly the same, it's very very close, so likely from the same source since it's kind of a distinctive look, or maybe clone... if I remember right those vertical "holes" bellow the floppy in the front had the LEDs and one of them had a reset switch?

oeuvre wrote:

you guys find the ugliest cases

Beige and green plastic = so 1997 😎 😊

Not sure what year they are but most must be before 2000.

More cases

Intel486dx33 wrote:

More cases

the first case #668-A is the full tower version of the case I got with my Asus P2B + PII 400 + ATI Rage AGP 8MB, this PC was build somewhere between 1998 and 1999, the motherboard is in the same case since new.

(the DVD drive and horribly yellowed covers were added much later, it had a different CD drive originally and a floppy drive)

Intel486dx33 wrote:

https://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=62753&t=1 https://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=62759&t=1 […]
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I remember this display cover style from school computer class ~1993