Neat little system, really. Love the fact that it's using a 1990s CD-ROM. And plain old AT PSU with a very silly name, not some modern replacement BS. Those appear to be in short supply these days. May they last!
And there's still a slot sheet not broken out, that's a rare sight.

davidrg wrote on 2022-04-12, 07:22:

Sadly the mounting bracket for both the hard disk and 3.5" floppy drive were gone when I first got the case 20+ years back so previously I held the floppy drive in place with duct tape and let the hard disk rest on the bottom of the case.

I'd assume some genius wanted to remove the drives and did not put the cage back in. If owning a dremel or something, you might be able to improvise with 5.25 to 3.5 mounting brackets.

Just out of curiosity, OP or anyone:

- Did the designer of that case not think of putting a 3.5" mount in the space below the PSU?
I assume the HDD is on its back to move the data cable an inch closer to the board? I wouldn't have thought of that, too OCD. 😜

- Has there ever been anything about whether HDDs care how they are situated, flat, on their back, on their side, at some weird angle? Don't think or hope so. I never cared or bothered to ask. Remember at least one setup of a desktop where it's on the side and some cases are variable, as desktop or tower.

- I've read somewhere that the VLB slot nearest to the CPU socket should be used for the VGA, to keep the conducts short. Is there any point to that?
Here, it's beaten to it by the NIC but with that board's rare layout having the socket not next to the 1st VLB but on the other end - hardly matters anyway?

- I'm not crazy enough to know ISA bandwidth and PIO modes by heart - would a VLB controller make any tangible difference on HDD speed with a 200 MB piece? Those were common, but probably not nearly worth bothering, if an ISA one is at hand...
There are enhanced IDE ones in VLB, with two channes, but the SB16 takes care of that CD-ROM, anyway.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-10, 12:57:

Neat little system, really. Love the fact that it's using a 1990s CD-ROM. And plain old AT PSU with a very silly name, not some […]
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Neat little system, really. Love the fact that it's using a 1990s CD-ROM. And plain old AT PSU with a very silly name, not some modern replacement BS. Those appear to be in short supply these days. May they last!
And there's still a slot sheet not broken out, that's a rare sight.

davidrg wrote on 2022-04-12, 07:22:

Sadly the mounting bracket for both the hard disk and 3.5" floppy drive were gone when I first got the case 20+ years back so previously I held the floppy drive in place with duct tape and let the hard disk rest on the bottom of the case.

I'd assume some genius wanted to remove the drives and did not put the cage back in. If owning a dremel or something, you might be able to improvise with 5.25 to 3.5 mounting brackets.

Yikes! Thats crazy money for a PSU. I've just stuck to using vintage AT PSUs because I've got loads of them and its a whole lot cheaper than buying a new ATX PSU and adapter. Once the capacitor shortages have subsided I plan to order a bunch (got a few SPARCstations, AlphaStations and a Prioris LX with bad proprietary PSUs) so I might recap this one when I have it open to replace the fan.

These days I'd be a bit reluctant to pop out slot covers if they've survived this long unless I really need the slot for something. Probably I'd only need to break this one out if I wanted to add a SCSI HBA and couldn't figure out why the other ISA slot isn't working. I can't really think of a good reason to add SCSI to this machine though - SCSI2SD is a bit too expensive to put in a 486 that has perfectly adequate IDE available.

As for the drive cage, that explanation has always been my assumption. I do have a few other brackets from cases that went to the dump years ago but the metrics in this case are a bit odd - the 3.5" drive is down a bit and spaced a distance from the 5.25" drive cage. Might try the dremel option someday to see if I can re-work another one to fit the space. A pair of sheet metal strips with the ends bent into an L shape and a hole drilled would probably work too - just something long enough to screw into the side of the floppy drive and the top of the 5.25" drive cage where the original bracket mounted.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-10, 12:57:

Just out of curiosity, OP or anyone:

- Did the designer of that case not think of putting a 3.5" mount in the space below the PSU?
I assume the HDD is on its back to move the data cable an inch closer to the board? I wouldn't have thought of that, too OCD. 😜

The original hard disk bracket used to mount flat on the bottom of the case where the hard disk is now. There are a pair of slots cut into the case and a bump for a retaining screw. I guess making a new bracket probably wouldn't be too hard if I had access to suitable sheet metal to bend into shape. The HDD is on its back mostly just so the metal bump in the case doesn't contact the circuit board though it does help with the IDE cable as I sacrificed a bit of length to hook up the CF card adapter. At the moment the HDD and CF adapter are at opposite ends of the cable with the IDE controller in the middle. Not sure how I'll handle that if I manage to track down one of my VLB I/O cards - might have to just find a longer IDE cable.

As for why the hard disk mounted where it did, the designer of this case chose to put the amplifier and PC Speaker under the PSU:

I wonder if it was put there just so the heat sink could be tied to the case for better thermals. Its a bad place for the PC speaker though - annoyingly quiet. I'll probably switch to using the PC Speaker input on the sound card when I figure out how to do so safely.

On the weekend I finally got out the desoldering gun and replaced the volume control potentiometer on the front of the case. The previous one was pretty crunchy - in one or two positions both speakers would sort of work but for the most part it just controlled the right speaker and in most positions it would just cut out. While I was at it I also fixed a broken trace on the rear input PCB - no idea what happened to it in the past but it almost looked like it had been operated as a fuse. I think this was for the CD Audio input which I'm not currently using but figured I may as well fix it while I had the tools out.

First challenge was actually getting the old one out. Its all a bit rusty there - I guess something unfortunate happened to this case long ago. The two screws didn't really seem to free anything. I probably spent half an hour trying to see if I could unscrew the nut on the potentiometer in place or if I could unscrew the nuts/rings on the audio jacks which appeared to be holding everything in place. Eventually I figured the rings were just holding the audio jacks to the metal bracket and the only thing holding the whole thing in place was the volume control knob. With a lot of careful prying it came free of the POT and flew across the table. With the new one in I now get both channels and I can use headphones for most games! Now I just need to figure out how to route the PC speaker into the soundblaster and I can play any game I like without annoying my wife!

The old one was pretty badly corroded so not at all surprising it wasn't working anymore.

Today the RAM I ordered for the GUS finally arrived - I was beginning to wonder if it even would. It was a few weeks over due and the tracking link recently expired. But now the GUS has 1MB which means I can now play a mod file I couldn't before. Otherwise of course no change but it was shame to leave all those memory sockets empty. I didn't think to take a photo of the freshly populated GUS, only the left over RAM which I guess may some day go on a VGA card:

And back in late April the SoundBlaster also got an upgrade which is now hiding the genuine OPL chip. This is the first Wavetable card I've ever seen in real life:

So aside from the PC speaker that pretty much completes the audio work I think. One interesting thing I've noticed now that I can use headphones is the noise - mostly only noticeable when nothing is playing. I assume a reasonable chunk of it is probably the audio cables making so many trips inside the case - from the rear input panel to the input select switch on the front, to the amplifier at the rear, back to the volume control and headphones/speakers at the front. Sometimes I can hear the hard disk (which is pretty close to the audio cables), other times it seems to be the video card. When exiting Jazz Jackrabbit before you land back at the shell there is some ordering information screen with an effect that wipes across the screen which you can hear quite clearly through headphones.

Next up is replacing that (still working!) barrel battery - the GUS RAM arriving has given me hope that the CR2032 holders will someday arrive too. Then its just replacing the noisy PSU fan (and perhaps recapping the PSU while I'm in there) and finding something better than twist ties to hold the 3.5" floppy drive in place.