Artex wrote:

Inherited this guy today. A contractor was working on our home and noticed my collection. He asked if he could drop off an old computer - I didn't expect too much but not bad - clean inside and external battery!

It posts but cannot get it to booth the drive even after manually entering the hard drive settings. Need to do some more testing but a seemingly decent system in great shape. And the MB sheet on the reverse side of the case cover - wha?!! Awesome. 😎

Sweet. That looks like the same exact Compudyne case I am using for a 486 build... but in much better shape. Mine had a bunch of water damage that I had to fix.

That's a spiffy case!

Also predator99 has a pm...

Lian Li Aluminum case.

These Cases are a real joy to work with.

Everything just fits.

I'm a sucket for lian-li cases. I just recently dropped $200 for a V2000 in good shape. My garage machine uses a black case just like you pictured, just a bit taller. Once you put your hands into these things, you don't ever want to go back.

luckybob wrote:

I'm a sucket for lian-li cases. I just recently dropped $200 for a V2000 in good shape. My garage machine uses a black case just like you pictured, just a bit taller. Once you put your hands into these things, you don't ever want to go back.

I really like Lian-Li cases as well. My main machine has a Lian-Li case and one of my "retro" builds also has a Lian-Li case. And I have a full tower Lian-Li case waiting for me at a relative's house.

My only gripe about them is that good cable management is pretty much non-existent.

Have a Microsolutions Backpack CD-ROM drive with sound module on the way.
I've been looking for one of these for quite a while. I already have a newer slim model, but this is one of the originals.

I bought a Dell Latitude CP and another Dell(Pentium M) for 15 bucks. Came with all of the accessories( 2 floppy drives, several PCMCIA 56k modem cards, and a Wifi card) in a cool old leather Archery box and old backpack.

The CP is a Pentium 2 366 with 64 megs of ram( there's one memory slot free). It needs a new drive( clicks and barely booted), so I'm going to shove a CF card.

When I pulled the battery out, the plastic release latch broke and popped out. And the power button is loose, but still works.

The screen looks good straight on when it's not black. I hope this will will be a good portable DOS machine if its weird audio card sounds OK. It's a Neomagic 2200. And I wonder if I can replace the screen with something new. But probably not since it's 4:3. 😀

Artex wrote:

I didn't expect too much but not bad - clean inside and external battery!

That's FX3000 board btw.

MCGA wrote:

The screen looks good straight on when it's not black. I hope this will will be a good portable DOS machine if its weird audio card sounds OK. It's a Neomagic 2200. And I wonder if I can replace the screen with something new. But probably not since it's 4:3. 😀

Chances are it's not the LCD itself that's the problem but the backlight.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Artex wrote:

I didn't expect too much but not bad - clean inside and external battery!

That's FX3000 board btw.

Good? Bad? Not familiar with this one..

bought this for 3 dollars. original heatsink and riser included.
just one problem....no clue on what power supply conector pinout HP user
and there is a power connector near the memory. and another one near cpu.

hp vectra xa6

The power connector near memory is regular P8+P9 'AT' style, the one near the CPU is an AUX connector. Pretty standard stuff really. Any later high-end AT PSU will have all three, otherwise go for a high-end early ATX PSU with AUX combined with an ATX->AT adapter. I got exactly that latter kind of PSU myself today, an AOpen (rebranded FSP) 300W affair.

Not a bad haul in fact:
- Abit BX133-RAID motherboard
- P3-700E with stock Intel HSF
- 768MB PC133 (3x 256MB double sided)
- AOpen 300W PSU
- Asus V7700 Gf2GTS
- Creative SBLive (the original one0
- Intel EtherExpress Pro 100 PCI

And then the seller said he'd taken all this out of the old case which would have made it impossible to sell. But he still had it. Uhuh, show me...

Turned out to be an AOpen HQ08 full tower with the much sought-after blue transparent front (as in this pic, but this is NOT the case I have):

Only problems:
1) case is in a butt-ugly state, with the side panels (badly) painted black and the top panel red. Also various brackets missing internally.
2) this case has a motherboard tray. And I urgently want these trays for my own project.

On the one hand I don't want to scap a usable case, on the other I really want those trays and this case would take a shitload of work to get presentable. Maybe I'll just take the (still remarkably clean) front panel off for if I ever come across another AOpen bigtower (they're pretty common here), extract the tray and scrap the rest...

dionb wrote:

Turned out to be an AOpen HQ08 full tower with the much sought-after blue transparent front (as in this pic, but this is NOT the […]
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Turned out to be an AOpen HQ08 full tower with the much sought-after blue transparent front (as in this pic, but this is NOT the case I have):

Why is it sought after? I have never come across anyone, wanting anything semi-trasnaprent colored plastic. Unless we are talking about you going back to 1998, and experienced the apple colour craze, that swept the globe. It was in 1998/99, and it should stay buried there, as it was the worst design decition ever. Lian-Li alu cases are timeless, and still smell's retro. Not apple colour. It is all beige or plexiglass'window'n led-disco-light's, that are retro these days, as far as I can follow Vogon users.

So, drunk me found this on eBay and tossed an offer. I wake up to find out it was accepted. YAY!

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https … %2F263912283415

I'll post proper pictures when I get her.

Good? Bad? Not familiar with this one..

Pretty fast one, if a 386DX build is considered.

brostenen wrote:

Why is it sought after? I have never come across anyone, wanting anything semi-trasnaprent colored plastic. Unless we are talking about you going back to 1998, and experienced the apple colour craze, that swept the globe. It was in 1998/99, and it should stay buried there, as it was the worst design decition ever. Lian-Li alu cases are timeless, and still smell's retro. Not apple colour. It is all beige or plexiglass'window'n led-disco-light's, that are retro these days, as far as I can follow Vogon users.

I've read several people here going all giddy about it, simply because it is so obviously 1999 and nothing says "turn of the Millennium" like a late P3 or early Athlon system with one of these babies.

I fully agree it's tasteless and tacky, but there are people out there who like this stuff and to them I say "YKINMKBYKIOK" 😉

luckybob wrote:

So, drunk me found this on eBay and tossed an offer. I wake up to find out it was accepted. YAY!

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https … %2F263912283415

I'll post proper pictures when I get her.

Cheers!

dionb wrote:

I fully agree it's tasteless and tacky, but there are people out there who like this stuff and to them I say "YKINMKBYKIOK" 😉

Yay... Tasteless it is. Let it be on Apple product's, what I am saying. And yes. It has it's justification on an iMac G3, because that is how it was designed. Everything else, non-apple, is just a puny attempt to cash in on Apple.

I had lamp's and salad bowls with that colour scheme, back in and around 2K. Regret it even today.

dionb wrote:

"YKINMKBYKIOK" 😉

brostenen wrote:

Yay... Tasteless it is. Let it be on Apple product's, what I am saying. And yes. It has it's justification on an iMac G3, because that is how it was designed. Everything else, non-apple, is just a puny attempt to cash in on Apple.

I had lamp's and salad bowls with that colour scheme, back in and around 2K. Regret it even today.

You're going to be disgusted with me now - but I've solved my dilemma by finding someone selling those cases NOS for almost nothing and ordering three more. Of which at least two are going to be instantly cannibalized for the tray, as will the ugly painted Frankencase. Number three of the new ones might just be kept as a testament to tacky crappiness (or sold on to someone who actually likes this stuff for the same price I paid).

And knocking off Apple... not the first or last time anybody did that. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let's just hope nobody does that with the appalling keyboards on the most recent model of MacBook. It reminds me most of a ZX81, and however warm my memories are for my very first computer, the warmth does not extend to its awful excuse for a keyboard.

Oh, and evidence that people are actually looking for these G3 rip-offs:
Help Identifying Computer Case from CompUSA

Artex wrote:

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Artex wrote:

I didn't expect too much but not bad - clean inside and external battery!

That's FX3000 board btw.

Good? Bad? Not familiar with this one..

Yep, it's the backlight. I have similar cloudy lighting on my Apple 30", which I bought in 2005, but still use daily. The notebook's screen definitely looks better in person than what the camera captured. The viewing angle is bleh though.

I would love if there was an upgrade path for these old laptops, just like I've seen for old gaming portables.

****************************

That case is tacky! Beige goes well with BEIGE and black IMO, not squirt-gun plastic. 😀 I recall walking through Frys and just being annoyed at the craze. And at that time, our work computers were being upgraded to Smurfintoshes( Blue & Whites ). I really like the later clear plastic designs though, my Quicksiver DP G4 looks fancy.