VOGONS


First post, by adalbert

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I recently managed to build a miniature AT-style case for 4DPS socket 3 mainboard, but I decided to upgrade it and put something more powerful there, so I created a Super Socket 7 system 😀

Here it is compared to a 24 inch monitor and a speaker.

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Here are some topics about building the case itself:
Re: DIY retro PC case projects
Little Voodoo (cardboard) Box [P1] + 486 with small DIY AT case

That case is measuring only 28 x 13,8 x 22cm, it has a form of a really miniature AT tower with laptop-style CD drive and 3,5" floppy drive, custom-made microcontroller driven MHz display and reset, turbo and power button. I am using pico-atx style power supply (that mainboard accepts ATX power), which requires 12V input from a regular brick-type power supply.

Specs:

Super Socket 7 mainboard, AT, small form factor, no signs of brand name, identified only by BIOS string (here is manual http://support.pcpartner.com/support/man/via/895400.pdf).
It has MVP3 chipset and the CPU voltage can be set from 1.8V.

K6-2 500 MHz CPU - i will replace that with K6-2+ I ordered from ebay, should generate less heat and save some power.

Voodoo Banshee 16MB AGP

Sound Blaster AWE64 Value

PCI WiFi card

64MB RAM (i can add more of coure, will replace that with 128MB)

DVD slim drive

20GB laptop HDD drive (Hitachi Travelstar, very quiet)

FDD

Turbo button connected to multiplier selection - allows choosing 250 or 500 MHz. Restart required. It can also be connected to FSB selection, but mainboard crashes after reboot so full power-down is required. In fact, turbo buttons weren't popular in PCs made in that time, but a MHz display looks cool 😀

I probably should make some cables shorter because it looks pretty messy inside, also the back side could be covered with something, but anyway it is a complete system now, which can take regular extension cards like a typical tower, but it is so small that it can stand on the desk, next to the monitor 😉

You can see on the photos that it is not much larger than a Windows 3.11 box. I think that such a small tower is even better solution than a desktop-style case. I am using it with a KVM switch, when it's not needed it can be unplugged and placed on a shelf very quickly.

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Repair/electronic stuff videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/adalbertfix
ISA Wi-fi + USB in T3200SXC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX30t3lYezs
GUI programming for Windows 3.11 (the easy way): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L272OApVg

Reply 1 of 7, by FuzzyLogic

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That is a freaking amazing retro SFF case you built. Great system too. But you need to beigify your monitor (http://www.krylon.com/products/fusion-for-plastic/) 😈 and get a beige keyboard.

Reply 2 of 7, by boxpressed

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That's amazing. With my K6-3+ SS7 box, I use Turbo to change the FSB and then use SETMUL to change the multiplier/disable caches.

Now all you need is a tiny monitor to go with it: Anyone use a 8"-10" TFT VGA monitor?

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Reply 3 of 7, by Jade Falcon

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Taking orders?
No Really. I bet a lot of people would buy a case like that.
It needs a bit of work before it could be marketed, but I get bet you could make a few cases like that and sell them.

Reply 4 of 7, by GeorgeMan

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Amazing!
If you decide to make any, I'm in 😁

1. Athlon XP 3200+ | ASUS A7V600 | Radeon 9500 @ Pro | SB Audigy 2 ZS | 80GB IDE, 500GB SSD IDE2Sata, 2x1TB HDDs | Win 98SE, XP, Vista
2. Pentium MMX 266| Qdi Titanium IIIB | Hercules graphics & Amber monitor | 1 + 10GB HDDs | DOS 6.22, Win 3.1, 95C

Reply 6 of 7, by Cyberdyne

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Whole Pentium III 800 machine, with extras, so you can allways use some other box, I used a old broken VHS box.

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I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.
PS. If I upload RAR, it is a 16-bit DOS RAR Version 2.50.

Reply 7 of 7, by adalbert

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Thank you for the nice comments, it took me a while to respond because I was busy with some other things, well, it's nice to know that some of you think that it would be worth of making more of such cases - the problem is that, as you all can see it is not perfectly finished and it's visible that it was made by hand, and I don't know if I would be able to make something of a higher quality. I was recently experimenting with acrylic paint and sponge rollers, which can add a bit of texture and yelowiness to it, but creating nice looking plastic parts is a bigger problem. I am trying to find some laser-cutting services which would provide me evenly-cut parts and don't take too much money for that. Most companies are only cutting acrylic glass, but I prefer using polystyrene because it would look much better, the stiffness is lower so it wouldn't crack easily and it is easy to paint. It's also very easy to glue polystyrene, also 3d printed parts stick to it extremely well and the separation is virtually impossible.

Cyberdyne wrote:

Whole Pentium III 800 machine, with extras, so you can allways use some other box, I used a old broken VHS box.

That's a cool project, nice way to recycle old VHS player 😀

Repair/electronic stuff videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/adalbertfix
ISA Wi-fi + USB in T3200SXC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX30t3lYezs
GUI programming for Windows 3.11 (the easy way): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L272OApVg