Prototype Mac Case, that is the question . . .

Could it be ...

Wikipedia[/url]"]The G3 used Apple's new "Gossamer" logic board, which had originally been developed with an eye towards maximum compatibility with PC components. This was known as the "Yellowknife" project, which had sought to develop the first Apple RISC product — capable of running any OS that would support it, be it Mac OS or Windows. It was an effort by Apple to gain market share, by allowing their hardware to run industry-standard software, but still remaining Mac OS proprietary. The prototype had a ZIF-socket G3 processor, PCI and ISA slots, Mac and PC serial ports, onboard SCSI, PC and Mac floppy drive connectors, ATX power supplies, and PS/2 keyboard and mouse connections, inserted into an ATX case. The project was scrapped by Steve Jobs, after his return to Apple, and his realization of the devastation of Apple's profits due to the Clone makers

Click to expand...

Dunno, room for seven slots. IBM's PC division relocated here, I'll ask the grlf when that was, she was with that division and its later morph into Lenono.

late for wokr . . .toodles.

I'd love to see pictures.

yeah pictures are nice!

A friend of mine that worked on SQA for G4 Cube @ Apple indicated the protos were all cage in a tin box... with push button power switch.

Yeah, sounds right, I need to look closer, but this thing may never have had a front bezel in the first place. The removable door MoBo tray just screams "prototype enclosure." User friendly it ain't. There are a couple of numbers to check, but I came up with bopkes googling the part number though.

The only real verbiage on the case is Caution: Do Not Remove Tape in English & Ideograms . . . so this idiot tore the translucent yellow tape off the front to gain access to the power/reset buttons and LEDs.

This thing has spots to put speakers and fans all over the place!

Oopsie! :O

Quickie right off the camera at lunch specials. Sorry.

This is what got me looking . . .





Notice the hook, whack on a board with a card on it, put in one screw to hold down the card and ain't nothin' movin' in there.









Found the mfr, but it feels like a prototyping case to me. Dunno.

Whatchathink? :?:

TTFN

That to me looks like a prototype of the first INTEL Mac.

i think that whole unit slid into a modified G5 case.

It does vaguely resemble the beige G3 in terms of overall shape and size, but many of the details seem to have more in common with a similar-era PC case I have (with the sideways-mounted PSU and shorter-wider shape). That stamped-in Apple logo does suggest that it's genuine, though. The motherboard tray does strike me as similar to the production G3 as well, if I remember correctly.

As for the extra slots, well, maybe this was an early prototype case originally intended to be more in line with the 9500/9600 (and perhaps it was developed into it at one point), and they simply cut it down to size at a later stage to get the G3 (which, aside from # of slots (and probably height; I've never seen a 9x00 in person closely enough to make detailed observations), is very similar to the 9x00, I think). It's purely speculation at this point, I think.

Who knows, you could have a veritable gold mine there!

I'm eager to hear (and see) more!

c

Hate to throw cold water on the fire, but my gut tells me that this is just a generic PC clone case missing the skins. The removable motherboard tray is a very common feature of "middling to good quality" PC cases, and the skins probably consisted of four parts: a snap-on plastic bezel, two "drop-down" or "tip-up" side panels, and a slides-on-from-the-back top that holds the side skins in place when it's secured. (Or, alternatively, it may just have consisted of the front bezel and a one-piece "U" shaped cover.) In fact, this case looks a *lot* like several cases I owned in the 1999-2004-ish time period. (Perhaps even a dead ringer for a particular 400Mhz Dual Celeron box dating from the beginning of the period.)

If the only evidence you have for some sort of "prototype" connection is that little Apple logo stamped in the metal, well... okay, here you go:

The tray the CD ROM drive is sitting on is from a PowerMac.

HOWEVER, look at the design of the case: peripherals in the 5 1/4 drive bays are *supposed* to be fitted with little plastic or metal mounting rails, allowing the device to be slotted in from the front and secured with screws. I think someone used that mounting tray because they lost the rails; note how the drive is sitting in the *middle* of two of the drive bays because the mounting plate is screwed into holes that are meant for the rails which would be at the midpoint of the drive when properly mounted.

In other words, well... it's junk, not a prototype. Sorry. :/

The board also has "Intel" slathered all over it and although it's certainly not the DTK, it's definitely some kind of Intel-based system.

I'm with G in that it's probably just a regular PC case missing its plastic skins. Custom-built PCs often use motherboards that don't exactly match up with what the case offers, especially if somebody overbuys a case or buys it with the intent to later install bigger cooling hardware, or just has a case already and puts whatever board they can put into it for free. Not every seven-slot case has a seven-slot board installed.

As for the fact that it has a similar optical drive ot Macs? was apple the only company that uses Matsu/Panasonic mechanisms? Alternately, Apple had switched to IDE by then. Any reason that a PC built by somebody scrounging for parts couldn't have used an optical drive pulled out of a G3?

My verdict is that it's a PC built as cheaply as possibly, whether or not the case itself is interesting or if better/more pictures will reveal that it was a common PC case, who knows.

Great link, now I can get another pair of trays! Thank heaven Apple finally gave up on that ridiculous plastic crap.

I realize this started out as a pretty much "Standard ATX case," but there are several things at odds with it being a production machine as pictured in the bezel removal diagram on its @$$end.

I checked out the exploded diagrams of the 8600/9600 cases in the Service Source while I was at work. Have they got a fan mounted to the left hand side of the case blowing air into it? It looks that way in the diagram to me and this case has that particular oddity. The fan is mounted on a very heavy gauge custom metal stamping that's mounted to the holes meant for the case's very nice domed grill for the front mounted fan, which the stamping entirely blocks as well. The stamping is a gauge and finish entirely different form the baseline case, which is lightweight and very nicely done sheet metal work.The hole on the case cover matching up with the fan is professionally done, but by no means a standard feature.

This has all the hallmarks of a short production run of an oddly modified stock case.

Timeline research:

1994 - IBM PC Division relocates to RTP (from info online, I'll back check that with my sweetie tomorrow)

1995 - First Macintosh Clone ships, CHRP is Published by Apple & IBM and ATX (Advanced Technology eXtended) spec developed at Intel

1996 - IBM and Motorola demo their CHRP prototypes

1997 - 9600/8600 Released & Apple halts all CHRP licensing.

Ten years later I found this oddity in a thrift shop just outside RTP.

BTW, that Apple drive mounting plate seems to be made to fit this case, it puts the Optical drive bay and the tape/zip bay just about where they wound up in the 9600/8600. Spacing is wrong for the floppy up top, which just fits above the Optical, but they were going to raise the forehead for the drawbridge case anyway. The 5.25" Drive Bay assembly sure looks like the exploded drawing in the Service Source and it's obvious that Apple cribbed some of the x600's case design features from the PC World. [] ]'>

Not saying it's an Apple prototype, not even saying it's an IBM CHRP prototype, just saying that when I look at it now, it looks like A prototype box . . .

. . . and that's alot of coinkidinks. :approve:

Can somebody get back to me on the existence of, and airflow direction of, the side-mounted fan in the 9600/8600 exploded diagrams.

More piccies in the AM, tonight I'll probably just tweak and compress the ones already up.

Any requests for pics of particular case details?

@ Corey: I stuck that Optical drive in there, I said that there were no goodies inside the empty case when I found it. It's obviously the Intel specified ATX form factor, but I figure that's what IBM or Motorola would have used for CHRP, the timing was spot-on for that. Only Apple kept building oddball, but very sexy, case designs after the advent of ATX.

Straightened and tweaked a bit, same size, but compressed at 50.















Let me know if these look better and what you'd like to see. Once you see the cage for holding the cards down, you won't think of it an "inexpensive" case. Very high quality aluminum sheet metal work.I wonder if Intel made an ATX reference design. The serial number appears to be in the mid-hundreds. It's also interesting to note the spot for an O.S. designation sticker. [] ]'>

Whatever happens, it's cool and I'm not gonna turn it into an ersatz Radius 81/110 after all. :disapprove:

I wormed my way all the way around and ate my own tail on google. 8-o



IBM's Long Trail CHRP MoBo = ATX! More or less, judging from the pic. ;D

The CHRP dream that Jobs killed . . .

Trash. Stop.

Page 16:

http://www.photolabs.ru/manuals/tr/qss31_training%20materials.pdf

Granted, it only shows the 5 and not 5A.. so it is an outdated document. *shrug*

Someone crammed an Apple part into a PC case. That is all.

Here's a better link for the Noritsu QSS-2901 Digital Computer Upgrade model PC-NRT-5A (like on the back of the case): http://www.photocomputers.com/service.php At least this has some specs for what fit into the chassis.

Sorry Trash.

By occam's razor, and any reasonable stretch of the imagination, I think g's swapped parts theory is most likely correct as well.

However, I found the info you guys have linked as well, doesn't fit, literally. This can't possibly be the case in that picture. The zip drive is centered, it would have to be on the left side, see pic of front side of my case. This case is also a normal PC config however.

@ MacJunky: the diagram of the case on page 30 of the first section matches my case from the front as does the layout you mentioned on p.16 of the second from the side, but the brochure pic shows a different case config altogether, dunno though.

Keep looking, I'd love to find out my WAG is incontrovertibly wrong.

In the meantime:

This document confirms that IBM's Long Trail was an ATX form factor MoBo.

http://www.put.com/oz/ozdi/199704.TXT

This is fun, I'll keep playing devil's advocate and get some more pics up of this strange beast and its modified steel cover.

Anybody got pics of the inside of the X600 case? In any case, the side fan hack would be blowing cooling air directly upon the RAM banks of Long Trail as pictured.

If the case has a side fan with duct, its from 2003ish or later. The extra ventilation was needed for Intel's Prescott Pentium 4 Toaster.

Looks like some one needed a bracket for a CD-ROM drive and found one from a Mac that happened to fit. I used to do that all the time.

I realize this started out as a pretty much "Standard ATX case," but there are several things at odds with it being a production machine as pictured in the bezel removal diagram on its @$$end.

Click to expand...

Uhm, what? Are you saying the diagram is wrong, or the diagram is something that would appear on a prototype, not a production case, what?

Looking at the pictures again I'm more and more certain I've dealt with this exact case before. It had a U-shaped top, and they "cleverly" hid the screws to remove the top behind it. Thus to open it you had to yank the bezel off. I remember people getting really confused because they were used to having the screws to get the top off in the back and the bezel firmly screwed in place from the inside, so by all appearances these cases would appear hermetically sealed if you didn't know the trick. (Not every reseller of these things was nice enough to put the sticker on the back.)

I checked out the exploded diagrams of the 8600/9600 cases in the Service Source while I was at work.

Click to expand...

What does that have to do with anything? The tray might be from a 9xxx, but the case has *nothing* to do with the tray. Again, look, it doesn't fit the spacing of the bays properly.

Have they got a fan mounted to the left hand... (snip)...The hole on the case cover matching up with the fan is professionally done, but by no means a standard feature.
This has all the hallmarks of a short production run of an oddly modified stock case.

Click to expand...

Actually, what I suspect happened here was that this case chassis, the design of which which I think dates from around 1998-1999, was updated to "relocate" that front fan to face to the side with that added-on bracket but they never updated the front stamping to get rid of the dome. Side-facing fans started being a "thing" sometime around 2001-2002 because of the sheer amount of heat coming off the 1Ghz+ AMD and Pentium 4 CPUs of that era was significantly more than that coming off 1999-era chips. Plus, you know, someone decided it looked cool. Undoubtedly the case skins were also updated to include some stamped/milled slots that matched up with this. (Or possibly they just cut a hole and screwed a grill over it.)

1997 - 9600/8600 Released & Apple halts all CHRP licensing.

Click to expand...

*Why* would an IBM case have a specific Apple drive tray in it? That isn't a "prototype" part, I was able to search it from the part number stamped on it.

Ten years later I found this oddity in a thrift shop just outside RTP.

Click to expand...

Heaven knows there weren't any other sources of junk computers in RTP besides SUPER SECRET laboratories.

BTW, that Apple drive mounting plate seems to be made to fit this case

Click to expand...

No, it's not. It happens to be the right width to wedge in there, but it's not made to fit that case by any stretch of the imagination. Here, I've annotated your picture to show what the problem is:



It's simply *not* the right part. The case has 3 drive bays; you screwed rails to the devices, and the rails had screw-ears which let you secure the device to the case. That mismatched tray turns 3 drive bays into *one* as mounted: It pushes the CD-ROM drive halfway into the bay above it, and the lip on the bottom edge of the tray means even if you had another one you wouldn't be able to put another regular-height device below it either. (You could stick one in there if you had the rails, or just chuck one in and let it lie on the bottom of the cage, but then there will be an obvious gap between it and the device above. Oh, yeah, I'm sure that's for "cooling", right?)

it puts the Optical drive bay and the tape/zip bay just about where they wound up in the 9600/8600. Spacing is wrong for the floppy up top...

Click to expand...

Sigh. The floppy goes in the 3 1/2 inch bay. There's a drawing of the bezel on the sticker that shows what it looked like: 3 exposed 5 1/4 inch bays, 2 exposed 3 1/2 inch slots, the bottom 3 1/2 device was obscured.

Seriously, I *swear* I had this exact case. If you googled *enough* you could find a picture of it, the problem is that no one *cares* about 2000-vintage generic PCs. It's a dime-a-dozen (but well built) OEM PC chassis, *nothing* special about it.

Not saying it's an Apple prototype, not even saying it's an IBM CHRP prototype, just saying that when I look at it now, it looks like A prototype box . . .. . . and that's alot of coinkidinks.

Click to expand...

"It came from a thift shop in a town where *maybe* there were prototype boxes floating around 10 years before I got it and, uhm, if I squint my eyes the proportions sort of remind me of the Power Mac 8600 even though it's actually wrong in every conceivable detail. By jove, PROTOTYPE!"

Yes, my first thought was "Prototype Mac Case" and that didn't fit the details of the case at all.

Second thought was Big Blue CHRP "Prototype Case" and that still may fit, but it's less likely than . . .

. . . my third WAG which is that it likely came from one of RTPs many development centers, the three Universities from which its name derives or one of the other Universities in the greater Raleigh area or from an industrial or possibly Server environment.

I just took/massaged/compressed the pics to prove you right in most details, especially about that drive tray . . .

. . . except for a couple of interesting details that might show that it's likely a low production, non-standard clone case for development, stock, general availability fits that scenario well.

CHRPness depends upon the date of mfr. which is curiously lacking, There's another number on the sticker covering the back of the case to google: SL-2960 HP is in the Triangle as well, but the case dimensions are completely wrong, but it would have made a great development chassis!

As I said earlier, finding that Apple Logo set me off, but it has been a very interesting line of research!

Pics in a few!

That fugly factory finger hole doesn't look baseline generic clone case to me at all.

That single detail makes repetitive removal of the metal shell quick, easy and painless indeed.

On the double-take, the side fan mod has a factory look as well, but not like something meant for a general production case for a stock clones.

Whatever, I still think it's an interesting, low production development case series, the question to me would be the actual timeline.

edit: see why I agree about the x600 bracket being a kludge, the depth is wrong, but it's something that would be readily available in any of the University Computer Labs around the Triangle.

If that motherboard is what came in it - it SIGNIFICANTLY pre-dates the Apple Intel DTK. That is an Intel D815EEA2 motherboard. It runs a Pentium 3 chip, and is from early 2001. This specific one was meant to be in "all-in-one" PCs with an LCD display (that funny connector next to the CPU between the chipset and the back panel ports is the internal-display port.)

(The picture of the cut-out corner)
That single detail makes repetitive removal of the metal shell quick, easy and painless indeed.

Click to expand...

Prior to this last round of pictures I had *no idea* what you were talking about, you hadn't posted any of the outer shroud. (I'd assumed that everything was missing, not just the bezel.) My first thought upon seeing that notch was perhaps there had been a locking device in that corner that someone had hacked out to open the case, but it does look like the edges of it have been turned/finished. That certainly implies this case was being used for *something* odd, but it doesn't negate the near statistical certainty that the case is a completely off-the-shelf item ordered out of an OEM catalog and modified by a the reseller/end user.

On the double-take, the side fan mod has a factory look as well, but not like something meant for a general production case for a stock clones.

Click to expand...

Looks like a bone-standard-if-somewhat-bland early-ish Pentium 4-era side panel to me. (The case is white and plain, which in my mind that anchors it to the early 2000s; colors like silver and black started being popular enough with OEM/small builder/home-built machines around 2003-2004 to start outnumbering the white/beige boxes, even for systems built for business/industrial use.)

Anyway. It's impossible to prove a negative *and* that cut-out corner is "interesting" so the case may well have served time in a lab setting, possibly as home to something interesting. (Or driving something interesting.) But it's just as likely that the case sat for years collecting dust, I dunno, under a cash register or in a stockroom and that cutout was added to route a cable or to clamp the thing into a kiosk. The missing drive rails and bezel suggest it was brutally stripped when it was removed from service; that *is* the sort of thing that happens to machines in commercial/industrial settings, which I guess is a point in favor of it not just being the box from under an accountant's desk. There might be an interesting story behind how the Mac drive tray found its way into it, but I would have some pretty serious doubts about it having anything to do with IBM/CHRP/etc, etc.

Nope, like I said there was NOTHING in the case when I picked it up, sorry for the confusion, this is one of the Win98 ROMburner project boxes,boards/drives, etc. The most telling point about dating would be:

If the case has a side fan with duct, its from 2003ish or later. The extra ventilation was needed for Intel's Prescott Pentium 4 Toaster.

Click to expand...

However, the x600 that was in development in the same general time frame as IBM's ATX form factor Long Trail CHRP board. Apparently it features a side mounted cooling fan as well. Can anyone confirm that it's pointed at the RAM Banks. I'd love to have a pic of the inside of an x600 case showing that fan location. At any rate, side fan cooling predates the P4 by at least five years.

The only two things that SCREAM development box to me are that great finger hole/case removal feature and the continuous height adjustments for PCI Cards of whatever height . . .

. . . like oversize/oddly sized development cards like prototypes for those crazy network sniffing cards in the Lunchbox from Tekekec. RTP is a hotbed of development of all kinds of Tech, second largest in the USA according to some mentions I've seen in CHRP related searches.

I've got the Win98 CD in the HackLab now, so this sucker is going back together very soon now, no matter what the heck this very cool case might be. [}] ]'>

Prior to this last round of pictures I had *no idea* what you were talking about, you hadn't posted any of the outer shroud. (I'd assumed that everything was missing, not just the bezel.) My first thought upon seeing that notch was perhaps there had been a locking device in that corner that someone had hacked out to open the case, but it does look like the edges of it have been turned/finished. That certainly implies this case was being used for *something* odd, but it doesn't negate the near statistical certainty that the case is a completely off-the-shelf item ordered out of an OEM catalog and modified by a the reseller/end user.

Click to expand...

I said it was a hurry-up at lunchtime session and that new pics would be up in the AM today.

On the double-take, the side fan mod has a factory look as well, but not like something meant for a general production case for a stock clones.

Click to expand...

Looks like a bone-standard-if-somewhat-bland early-ish Pentium 4-era side panel to me. (The case is white and plain, which in my mind that anchors it to the early 2000s; colors like silver and black started being popular enough with OEM/small builder/home-built machines around 2003-2004 to start outnumbering the white/beige boxes, even for systems built for business/industrial use.)

Click to expand...

Check the "AT" compatibility listings on the door/tray, that makes me think it's much earlier than Y2K. More likely an early ATX development case, much modded from a future generation of Clone Boxen.

Anyway. It's impossible to prove a negative *and* that cut-out corner is "interesting" so the case may well have served time in a lab setting, possibly as home to something interesting. (Or driving something interesting.) But it's just as likely that the case sat for years collecting dust, I dunno, under a cash register or in a stockroom and that cutout was added to route a cable or to clamp the thing into a kiosk. The missing drive rails and bezel suggest it was brutally stripped when it was removed from service; that *is* the sort of thing that happens to machines in commercial/industrial settings, which I guess is a point in favor of it not just being the box from under an accountant's desk. There might be an interesting story behind how the Mac drive tray found its way into it, but I would have some pretty serious doubts about it having anything to do with IBM/CHRP/etc, etc.

Click to expand...

Indeed, but considering the string of coincidences, Long Trail CHRP is by far the most interesting of improbabilities.

toodles, late back to wlrk again! :O

Some cases after 2000 still had AT screw holes listed IIRC.

Check the "AT" compatibility listings on the door/tray, that makes me think it's much earlier than Y2K. More likely an early ATX development case, much modded from a future generation of Clone Boxen.

Click to expand...

I already said in my opinion the case chassis itself dated to somewhere around 1999 and was updated to add the side fan sometime later than that. That may actually be a late date, I'm basing that on the fact that the system I had which I *swear* was exactly that case was built sometime in late 1999-2000. So far as I know the tooling for parts of that case could date back to the original release of the ATX specs by Intel in 1995.

In any case, it wasn't particularly uncommon to see cases of around that vintage that offered the possibility of mounting either AT or ATX-style motherboards. (And conversely I've seen motherboards that could be mounted in either style of case; the motherboard would be roughly square and the ATX mounting was generally a nasty kludge job with cables running to a backplate. Of course, by this point AT motherboards were *all* nasty kludge jobs with wires running from all over the motherboard to ports mounted on slot covers.) You'd have to swap out the back panel to accommodate an AT board but the tray part of the assembly could have been used in multiple case configurations.

Indeed, but considering the string of coincidences, Long Trail CHRP is by far the most interesting of improbabilities.

Click to expand...

If it *really* was something modified prior to Y2K for something that needed a special fan layout I'd actually say a far more likely possibility than anything CHRP would be an Alpha motherboard. Alpha was HOT in the late 90's, both literally and figuratively, and ATX incarnations weren't rare.

That bizarre adjustable dingus to hold the cards in place (in addition to the slot cover screws) is by far the most interesting part of the case; again, I swear I had almost exactly that case but it didn't have that part. That actually makes me wonder if this might have been mounted in a truck/van, or some other location where vibration might be a problem. (Inside a rolling kiosk? On a factory floor or inside a piece of manufacturing equipment? Etc, etc.)

Looking further, I'm not completely clear on what component has the Apple logo...

If it's just the drive tray that you have the optical drive mounted on, then it's a simple mix-up: someone tossed an Apple drive tray in it when it didn't belong. Looking further, those 5.25" drive bays are obviously meant for a standard "attach the metal rail on each side of the optical drive" type mounting - I've seen those a thousand times in many random chassis manufacturers over the years. With the side fan, this looks like your average early-2000s Pentium 4-era chassis.

And it almost assuredly had a cheap plastic front panel that is long since lost. (Hell, I have two old ATX chassis myself whose front panels are broken enough that they don't stay put any more.) Without those front panels, they all look remarkably similar to yours.

I think your Apple tray was a complete red herring. You just have a low-end ATX chassis from the early 2000s.

Found it! Side mounted fan in Apple's Workgroup Server 9650 in the same case as the X600s with which it was introduced in February 1997.

So the side fan is totally consistent with the time frame I outlined earlier. IBM's Long Trail CHRP Board was developed in parallel to the x600 series, rendering the side fan's presence a moot point in terms of dating the case in question as far as I'm concerned.

g makes an interesting point about it possibly being for industrial use, but I'd think that there would be filters on the fans. There are however, a dozen holes distrbuted about the front and sides which might be consistent with early shock mounting methods (drives in Luggable computers, etc.) but I think that's much less likely than this being a very nice case intended for developers in the fresh new world of the ATX standard. That would be motherboard developers as well as developers of PCI cards and ISA cards supported in the early Intel design standards for ATX.

This case being from a Bog standard, cheap Clone is clearly contraindicated IMO.

I do believe that this case is part of a short production run of cases intended for the development environment. As such, more than a few of these cases probably made their way into the many Tech houses here in RTP and I was lucky enough to snag one several years later in a local Thrift.

In my wildest dreams this may have housed one of the prototypes for Big Blue's Long Trail CHRP demonstration board during its development right here in RTP. Though it could well have been developed in a facility elsewhere, the Glendale Labs where my Pops was a boffin at one point comes to mind, but IBM's entire PC Division was right here in NC during that time frame..

Stranger things happen with regularity here in the Bermuda Triangle of N.C. :lol:

Last pic set unless I get requests for any details:

Here's a pair of shots of your expansion card dingus, g.





Fugly fan in the side implementation:



Nicely stamped, notched and seamed "finger hole" for easy, repetitive access to case innards, clearly not an attractive, consumer oriented design feature.



Drive bay makeover for Dimetrodon, the Intel MoBo, Win98 Rom HackStation candidate. Note the 2.5" SCA MiniDrive with cable adapter mounted in a 3.5" adapter and mounted in the 3.5" Drive "Magazine Clip." Let's see if '98 handles the UltraSCSI card and drive with any more aplomb than the ubuntu NetBook Remix did.



Last, but not least, the FDD/Zip does indeed fit mit dat meshuggah x600 Drive Tray installation.



This has been fun, but I'm going back to fitting this out as an ancient Win98 computer rather than admiring it as an empty curiosity.

But I really am glad it caught my eye, it's a great toy . . .

. . . and even better as an exercise in fantasy/imagination and curiosity! [] ]'>

BTW, if anyone has a half dozen of what might be suitable metal drive rails available, PLEASE let me know, I'd love to have a set. :approve:

Found it! Side mounted fan in Apple's Workgroup Server 9650 in the same case as the X600s with which it was introduced in February 1997.
So the side fan is totally consistent with the time frame I outlined earlier. IBM's Long Trail CHRP Board was developed in parallel to the x600 series, rendering the side fan's presence a moot point in terms of dating the case in question as far as I'm concerned.

Click to expand...

"I saw an airplane with a propeller at the local field today:"



"Even though it differs in a few minor points it's *CLEARLY* a prototype Luftwaffe combat aircraft, I mean, look how closely its configuration matches that of the Messerschmitt Bf109, which are known to have existed ON THE SAME PLANET!"



"See how the propeller is on the *FRONT*? This is a World War II vintage aircraft, any other details are totally a moot point in terms of dating the machine in question as far as I'm concerned."

I think that's much less likely than this being a very nice case intended for developers in the fresh new world of the ATX standard. That would be motherboard developers as well as developers of PCI cards and ISA cards supported in the early Intel design standards for ATX.

Click to expand...

Uhm, developers nail motherboards to whatever's handy, they don't get special things.

This case being from a Bog standard, cheap Clone is clearly contraindicated IMO.

Click to expand...

I'm sure it's nice sheet metal but it's nothing special. The cases they sell to "white box" makers are often more sturdy than the exquisitely-engineered-but-flimsy-in-pieces plastic-and-tinfoil boxes that brand-name systems come in. If your basis for comparison is Apple's cases from the 90's then, well, it's a bad reference point. They're "highly engineered" but the materials were *crap* compared to a cheap clone thrown together out of generic Taiwanese parts.

I do believe that this case is part of a short production run of cases intended for the development environment. As such, more than a few of these cases probably made their way into the many Tech houses here in RTP and I was lucky enough to snag one several years later in a local Thrift.
In my wildest dreams this may have housed one of the prototypes for Big Blue's Long Trail CHRP demonstration board during its development right here in RTP. Though it could well have been developed in a facility elsewhere, the Glendale Labs where my Pops was a boffin at one point comes to mind, but IBM's entire PC Division was right here in NC during that time frame..

Click to expand...

You know, if that makes you feel warm and fuzzy, sure, that's what happened. Your only pieces of evidence are a red herring drive bracket and a general sense that at least some of the case's tooling dates to an era when AT motherboards were still floating around. (I bought my last BRAND NEW AT motherboard in late 2000, a 500Mhz K6-2 to upgrade someone's 386-40* on the cheap, and you could still readily buy cases that could take them.) That's *it*. You have no dates, no labels, no engravings, nothing, but sure, believe that it's a prototype if it makes your day somehow. I like believing that All Dogs go to Heaven with less evidence than that.

(* As an aside, that 386 had a *really* nice case. Thick metal, the chassis alone probably weighed 20 pounds, easy to access drive bays, TOTALLY a prototype. No, wait, it spent its whole life working in a law office. It did have an awesome label on it that said it was made in Taiwan by a factory with the address "something-something Science-Based Industrial Park Road blaw-blaw-blaw.")

Nicely stamped, notched and seamed "finger hole" for easy, repetitive access to case innards, clearly not an attractive, consumer oriented design feature.

Click to expand...

Or maybe there was just a trim piece of some sort that snapped into that area, long lost now. There's a nice big round hole in the chassis it could have snapped into. Or, again, some sort of anti-theft bracket, perhaps. It being a "finger hole" sounds pretty ridiculously sketchy to me. But again, it can be whatever you like.

. . . and even better as an exercise in fantasy/imagination and curiosity! [] ]'>

Click to expand...

I ran across this great website the other day. It was made by this guy who works a landscaper in Utah, who one day was out collecting rocks to throw in gardens when he was suddenly struck by how a nearby boulder *totally* looked like a dragon skull. So now he's dedicated his life to the study of the giant dragons that lived in Utah that crystallized and turned into rocks half a billion years ago but left amazing mathematical clues that only he understands that proves that they're *not* just rocks, no matter what those nasty paleontologists who keep making fun of him say. Everybody needs a hobby.

Found it! Side mounted fan in Apple's Workgroup Server 9650 in the same case as the X600s with which it was introduced in February 1997.
So the side fan is totally consistent with the time frame I outlined earlier. IBM's Long Trail CHRP Board was developed in parallel to the x600 series, rendering the side fan's presence a moot point in terms of dating the case in question as far as I'm concerned.

Click to expand...

"I saw an airplane with a propeller at the local field today:"

Click to expand...

Great one! :lol: But the only point I was and have been making in reference to the X600 is that it nails introduction of the side mounted cooling fan to the timeline seven(?) years prior to the P4 thermal eruption event.

I think that's much less likely than this being a very nice case intended for developers in the fresh new world of the ATX standard. That would be motherboard developers as well as developers of PCI cards and ISA cards supported in the early Intel design standards for ATX.

Click to expand...

Uhm, developers nail motherboards to whatever's handy, they don't get special things.

Click to expand...

Granted, but developers of motherboards for a brand spanking new form factor reference design don't.

This case being from a Bog standard, cheap Clone is clearly contraindicated IMO.

Click to expand...

I'm sure it's nice sheet metal but it's nothing special . . .

Click to expand...

Having done a lot of custom sheet metal work of all sizes for many uses and having dissected a considerable number of computer cases to collect the more interesting bits of sheet metal work over the years, I beg to differ.

I'll ask middle little bro about the likely intentions of the designer of the sheet metal, construction techniques employed and probable production date of this case. He does exactly this kind of packaging design work for blade servers, switching and test equipment, etc. at Tekelec. Which is a major reason I couldn't resist bidding on the Chameleon Open LunchBox BEAST from Tekelec. [] ]'>

I do believe that this case is part of a short production run of cases intended for the development environment. As such, more than a few of these cases probably made their way into the many Tech houses here in RTP and I was lucky enough to snag one several years later in a local Thrift.
In my wildest dreams this may have housed one of the prototypes for Big Blue's Long Trail CHRP demonstration board during its development right here in RTP. Though it could well have been developed in a facility elsewhere, the Glendale Labs where my Pops was a boffin at one point comes to mind, but IBM's entire PC Division was right here in NC during that time frame..

Click to expand...

You know, if that makes you feel warm and fuzzy, sure, that's what happened. Your only pieces of evidence are a red herring drive bracket and a general sense that at least some of the case's tooling dates to an era when AT motherboards were still floating around.

That table of compatibility specs was a curiosity I thought helped date this case to the development period of ATX equipment. I appreciate all the info about compatibilities of cases, and I'd love to hear about any other cases with such info stamped onto the MoBo tray for reference long after the documentation on the case had been tossed. Curious to see, that's all.

Click to expand...

You have no dates, no labels, no engravings, nothing, but sure, believe that it's a prototype if it makes your day somehow . . .

Click to expand...

Actually, that's one of the clearest of indicators that this isn't a production case from a clone. Note the fact that there is no FCC classification for A or B use or residue from the removal of such anywhere on the case whatsoever. See the comparison picset below.

(* As an aside, that 386 had a *really* nice case. Thick metal, the chassis alone probably weighed 20 pounds, easy to access drive bays, TOTALLY a prototype . . .

Click to expand...

Sounds just like my Radius 81/110 which also has a cool card retention design. This is a VERY light weight, highly refined piece of sheet metal work with an ugly, utilitarian cover that came with a generic front bezel as documented in the removal diagram on the backplane, that being being one of the very few stickers on the case.

Nicely stamped, notched and seamed "finger hole" for easy, repetitive access to case innards, clearly not an attractive, consumer oriented design feature.

Click to expand...

Or maybe there was just a trim piece of some sort that snapped into that area, long lost now. There's a nice big round hole in the chassis it could have snapped into. Or, again, some sort of anti-theft bracket, perhaps. It being a "finger hole" sounds pretty ridiculously sketchy to me. But again, it can be whatever you like.

Click to expand...

As I said, there are four of those holes on each side and the front of the case, it's not related to the finger hole at all.

. . . and even better as an exercise in fantasy/imagination and curiosity! [] ]'>

Click to expand...

I ran across this great website the other day. It was made by this guy who works a landscaper in Utah, who one day was out collecting rocks to throw in gardens when he was suddenly struck by how a nearby boulder *totally* looked like a dragon skull. So now he's dedicated his life to the study of the giant dragons that lived in Utah that crystallized and turned into rocks half a billion years ago but left amazing mathematical clues that only he understands that proves that they're *not* just rocks, no matter what those nasty paleontologists who keep making fun of him say. Everybody needs a hobby.

Click to expand...

Yep, I have several that I cycle through with regularity, cyclical mania and depression being a contributing factor that adds a bit of zest to my participation in each. [] ]'> I need to document the interesting case features at the back of the case on top and bottom. They look lke a clever implementation of a quick-change racking clip system for the chassis in its Bare@$$ nekkid' configuration. Again one of several curiosities about this beast.

Also take note of the sixty one bow-tie LED/Switch locations scattered punched all about about the front of the case and the four neat neatly spaced rectangular punches as well. Yet another curiosity the leads me to believe that this was a General Purpose/Specialty case and not a mass produced item.

I'll try to post the comparison pics of a pre-P4 bog standard Clone case I made up to point out the differences at lunch time. I'll document the "racking clip" features tonight as well.

Once again, my first thought was "PROTOTYPE!" when I found that Apple Logo simply because the case bore absolutely no resemblance to any Mac case I'd ever seen, especially the drive mounting plate I'd never before seen IRL or in documentation for the systems I've never owned that employed it.

late again! toodles!

Actually, that's one of the clearest of indicators that this isn't a production case from a clone. Note the fact that there is no FCC classification for A or B use or residue from the removal of such anywhere on the case whatsoever. See the comparison picset below.

Click to expand...

I don't think I have have *ever* seen a white-box clone with FCC classification stickers certifying the assembled unit. Not ever, ever, ever. In one of your pictures the power supply *does* appear to have an FCC sticker on it, however. If the case and power supply were sold as a unit then only the power supply needs the sticker. (And to cut off the possible objection, that still applies if that's not the original supply, of course.)

Also take note of the sixty one bow-tie LED/Switch locations scattered punched all about about the front of the case and the four neat neatly spaced rectangular punches as well. Yet another curiosity the leads me to believe that this was a General Purpose/Specialty case and not a mass produced item.

Click to expand...

That case that I really wish I still had to take a picture of looked *exactly* like that from the front, to the point that I would bet money it was stamped from the same tooling. Ever think that maybe the company that designed it might have perforated the front panel like that because it would let them move around the locations of things like the power button and LEDs and sell a line of seemingly distinct cases that just had a different plastic bezel? IE, if Joe Blow Cloner Incorporated agrees to order (some many hundreds/thousands) of the things it qualifies them to get their choice of bezel with a milled logo and the switches wherever they want? That actually argues strongly *against* it being some sort of prototype for a specific form factor, a prototype wouldn't have all these neat universal features that let the OEM's customers pick and choose and mix and match bits and pieces to get exactly what they need.

I'll try to post the comparison pics of a pre-P4 bog standard Clone case I made up to point out the differences at lunch time. I'll document the "racking clip" features tonight as well.

Click to expand...

Your comparison is meaningless, it's a sample of *one*. I've owned generic tower cases that you could probably climb up on top of and jump on without hurting, while I've had others that you could literally crumple up in your hands. (I'm using the word "literally" correctly according to the dictionary meaning in that sentence, no exaggeration.) The cost difference between the two when new would be about $60.

I could pick up a diamond and a piece of pencil lead and froth for hours how they're not ultimately the same thing because one is so much sparklier than the other but from a chemistry standpoint I'd still be wrong.

Anyway, again, if it makes you feel good believe whatever you want. Clearly you're not to be convinced here.

Your comparison is meaningless, it's a sample of *one*. I've owned generic tower cases that you could probably climb up on top of and jump on without hurting...

Click to expand...

Hell, I had one that was literally bullet proof. We used it as a stand to put things on that we shot, and everything from .22 to 9mm would - at best - pass through one side then rattle around inside. .45 would pass all the way through more often than not, and rifle rounds would pass completely through as well. But for small-caliber pistol rounds, this chassis (a full-tower server chassis,) would have been a perfectly decent thing to duck behind if a firefight broke out. That chassis was our "shooting target stand" for a couple years before it finally sustained enough structural damage to no longer be useful.

And yes, I had used it as a step-stool before. It was sturdier than many real step-stools I have used before. It had zero problems holding my 200-lb. self, including jumping on it.

With all that metal, I was thinking 4400 at first, perhaps another similar type model that was a tower (not a desktop).

Actually, that's one of the clearest of indicators that this isn't a production case from a clone. Note the fact that there is no FCC classification for A or B use or residue from the removal of such anywhere on the case whatsoever. See the comparison picset below.

Click to expand...

I don't think I have have *ever* seen a white-box clone with FCC classification stickers certifying the assembled unit. Not ever, ever, ever.

Click to expand...

In that case, every singly bvanilla clone sold was in clear violation of FCC regulations. I'd be very surprised if "any" of the case imports advertized on the pages of Computer Shopper back in the day failed to have an FCC Class B certification label per import regulations or at least my limited understanding of them. Every computer sold in the US of A for home use has to meet and display Class A FCC approval.

Your Accountants Mid-Tower at work would have been Class B and he may have used it against regulations in his home office, we all did that back in the day.

For industrial environments, development enclosures, servers for use in industrial environments and MilSpec hardware requires no such certifications . . .

. . . still don't think that means a whole heck of a lot other than being a notable exception. :-/

Also take note of the sixty one bow-tie LED/Switch locations scattered punched all about about the front of the case and the four neat neatly spaced rectangular punches as well. Yet another curiosity the leads me to believe that this was a General Purpose/Specialty case and not a mass produced item.

Click to expand...

That case that I really wish I still had to take a picture of looked *exactly* like that from the front, to the point that I would bet money it was stamped from the same tooling. Ever think that maybe the company that designed it might have perforated the front panel like that because it would let them move around the locations of things like the power button and LEDs and sell a line of seemingly distinct cases that just had a different plastic bezel?

Click to expand...

Tooling for the can is cheap in comparison to hard tooling for the plastic bezel. I don't recall offhand ever seeing a generic case where the front panel wasn't integrated in to the Bezel plastics.

I'll try to post the comparison pics of a pre-P4 bog standard Clone case I made up to point out the differences at lunch time. I'll document the "racking clip" features tonight as well.

Click to expand...

Your comparison is meaningless, it's a sample of *one*.

Click to expand...

We'll see after work. Late again, ta!

Quick shop, and we have what Trash wants to do:

In that case, every singly bvanilla clone sold was in clear violation of FCC regulations. I'd be very surprised if "any" of the case imports advertized on the pages of Computer Shopper back in the day failed to have an FCC Class B certification label per import regulations or at least my limited understanding of them. Every computer sold in the US of A for home use has to meet and display Class A FCC approval.

Click to expand...

So... silly question, *is* the power supply in that thing original or did you add it?

If you look at the link I included to the FCC "Declaration of Conformity" it talks about how the FCC rules changed in the late 1990's to make life easier on clone builders. Roughly speaking the current rules sort of give bargain-basement cloners an out if they sell computers slapped together using individual certified parts. (If you google more about that you'll find some really brain-hurty stuff about the exact rules, the recommended labeling, etc, etc. Broadly speaking the rules could pretty much be interpreted as allowing you to stuff whatever you want in a case and power supply combination that at some point has been tested together.)

But to cut to the chase: If the power supply in that thing has the logo that came out with the current FCC rules (which took effect post-1998, I can't see the label clearly enough in your photo), "F" "C", and a smaller "C" nested in the first C surrounded by a box it almost absolutely post-dates the CHRP work you're trying to relate this to. If the case/PSU were sold as a unit that alone would be "just enough" to fly under the FCC's radar unless someone specifically reported the company's products as gross EMF polluters.

I don't recall offhand ever seeing a generic case where the front panel wasn't integrated in to the Bezel plastics.

Click to expand...

Some of us could spend all day sending you pictures of generic cases that have the buttons and LEDs mounted in the metal instead of the plastic.Nothing special about that or your case.

Nothing special about holes all over the place. This is par for the course with generic PC cases.

Please stop.

Oh, and take note that plenty of generic cases have a CE stamped into them but the letters are closer together than the proper logo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_of_two_used_CE_marks.svg

FINALLY.

It's an Enlight EN-7101AX or related model.

Major OEM, been popular forever, these things were *dirt common*. (Although most serious GAMERZ preferred the taller 7237.)

TADAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :lol:

Keep looking, I'd love to find out my WAG is incontrovertibly wrong.

Click to expand...

Thank you very much snarkasourus! I even have one of those oddball plugs for the backplane! ;D

So I've got what's basically this case with what may be a factory side fan mod that's not shown, or could have been added by a reseller.

- mine has some nifty little sheet metal clips along the side edges for better shielding contact that are missing in the pics.

- mine has that crazy card stabilizing dingus

- it also has that unsightly finger hole mod that makes removing the shell a breeze.

I just wish there was a pic showing the top of the inner chassis of the Enlight case. The two square bumps on the floorplate at the back of that case are clearly shown, matching the indentations on the bottom side of mine. My case also has what appear to be matching, recessed clip sockets in the same position on the top of the case.

Tonight I was thinking about what you'd said about the card retention dingus pointing to the case possibly having been vehicle mounted. I'll have to fab a clip set for my TelCo rack to fit and test that theory out. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this case, sans shell, had been installed in something as pedestrian as a Mobile News Unit Van's racking. What made me think of that applications was that the most similar sheet metal work I'd seen was a set of four Beta-PRO cartridge storage canisters I bought at my metal recycler in da Bronyx. Those boxes looked for all the world like oversize Ammo Boxes.

1996 entry of Enlight's Company Chronical says:

Sales revenue reached US$ 140 million

ATX chassis mass production begins

Enlight Corporation poes public (OTC )

HEH! 1996! The redonkulous fantasy regarding this case's history lives on! [)] ]'>

Cheap clone box indeed! MSRP of $59.00 with 300W PSU!

Forgot to mention: As I've tried to make clear a couple of times, there was no PSU, no MoBo, no Drives, no goodies installed at all (aside from that mis-matched Apple Drive Plate) in the barren sheet metal case when I laid my grubby little paws upon it.

I wonder if NewEgg has the LED fixtures for the front of the case, I can make this sucker light up like something out of a 50's SCI-FI B-Movie Thriller! [] ]'>

I *thought* it looked kinda familiar. My dad had one of these (maybe not the exact model) that he built in 1998. Used an ASUS Pentium MMX board in it. To get the lid off, you reached underneath the bezel and pulled outward to remove it, then there were three screws that held the u-shaped lid on.

-J

TADAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :lol:

Keep looking, I'd love to find out my WAG is incontrovertibly wrong.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I actually sort of regret my timing. After the fact I realized it would have been a lot more fun if I'd waited for you to post your exquisitely detailed photoessay definitively debunking the idea that it could be anything but a custom-fabricated low production run engineering marvel, no chance at all it could just be an (albeit slightly modified?) off-the-shelf item.

HEH! 1996! The redonkulous fantasy regarding this case's history lives on! [)] ]'>

Click to expand...

Earliest trace of a mention I can find of this case model with casual searching is from late 1998. That doesn't definitively prove that it *didn't* exist in 1996, but...

Remember those links tossed out by MacJunky and snuci on page 1? I think they're dead right. The modifications to that case *completely* fit in with it once being part of a big, expensive high-volume film scanning/photo-processing machine. The labeling matches up, the specs quoted (A fast Pentium III or early Pentium IV) fit in with a 2000-ish vintage case, that chopped-out corner of the case (and the metalwork for the side-venting fan) is the sort of thing a company that makes industrial lab machines could do in house, adding that card-holder thing to counter vibration, it all makes *much* more sense than your "testbench case" idea.

Here:



There it is, what is clearly an Enlight 7101 case embedded in the left side of the machine, a QSS-2901 photo printer. That's what it is/was. So... yes, it is actually "special", this wasn't someone's desktop PC. But it was never a PowerPC prototype either.

(For the record, I figured out what this case was by finding a scanned copy of a July 2000 issue of "Computer Shopper" magazine online. There are pictures of this case *everywhere*, and seeing the bezel totally clinched it for me that I'd had that exact unit.)

EDIT: Here's a picture of a machine with the skins pulled off the left side, there's your case right there, definitively. If you do an image search for the QSS-2901 you'll find another picture of one with the side panel off that shows the computer case inside, with the cover on it, *WITH* the corner notched out for some sort of cable anchor. Just like yours.

Anyway, again, if it makes you feel good believe whatever you want. Clearly you're not to be convinced here.

Click to expand...

You know me so well, EudiG! Did you figure that out here or back in the day when I had the bone in my teeth goin' at it with Dr. Bob? [)] ]'>

WAGs are the lottery tickets of the imagination . . . a virtual dollar gets you in it for as much pie in the sky dreamin' as you can fit in . . .

I learned a crapload of new stuff playing with this stuff, WAGs are great for that.

Buying into your dreams IRL for a dollar can be just as much fun for a few days as well, but ante up more than a buck and ultimately . . .

. . . Lotto is just a regressive intelligence tax. :

EatingCrowPicSet coming right up!

CHRP chops it ain't, but smacking the snot out of a few Bazillion Pixels a day in an umpty$$$$k Vertical Market Workstation beats the crap outta' cooking the books under your accountants desk as a back story any day, buddy! [] ]'>

First, the real smoking gun . . .



. . . remember that translucent tape I said I'd torn off? There's residue from it in the pics of my case where I removed the indicated patch, but no residue to suggest that the vertical patch was ever applied.

Notice that there's no case cover in evidence in that shot. This is the kind of racked installation I've been envisioning for a case built like this one. Especially so with the extra RFI shielding clips my case has on the side edges, presumably for making contact with the walls in its little metal cage. The clip slots/sockets on the top with matching socket indentations on the bottom had me thinking mobile unit racking.



The punched divot in the stamped rectangular recess makes good contact with the top of the PSU housing, Since the PSU is bolted right up to the case for grounding, my guess is that the nubbin sticking down onto the PSU top is for stabilization/vibration damping or summat . . . dunno, guesses?

I found a couple of interesting benefits/features when that x600 drive plate was installed in a possible retirement job for this box.



First, it raises the Optical to a level which clears an annoyingly located MOLEX socket for the PSU connection . . .



. . . and it effectively turns a three bay config into a four bay config. It doesn't quite fit in its standard plastic mounting, but If I needed it, that I/O panel's PCB would be mounted to the Optical's cover plate so fast its little head would spin and any mounted memory cards or thumb drives would be scattered about.

Better yet, the FDD or Zip still fits fine duct taped onto the Optical up top and there's room for a 3/4 height 5.25" I/O panel underneath. If I were a Video Pro or the Sound Guy for a band this thing would be inside a custom, shock mounted carryall with front/back doors and a storage compartment up top in no time flat. Matter of fact . . .

. . . I may just do that for itsshays-n-igglesgays! :approve:

In which it's the 68kMLA, so everything that's not a standard ExcelBox is clearly a prototype, and integrated systems are special.

I do wish you'd explain that comment: Snarky, ironic, sarcastic? It certainly failed to budge the witty meter.

The 68kmla is a place where the back stories of Douglas Adam's IIfx and Steve Jobs Apple\\ are held to make them more special by their owners and others than much finer examples of either machine. Prototypes, special editions and oddities are avidly sought and cool vertical market systems for Content Production are highly regarded.

If by this . . .











. . . you mean by a "standard ExcelBox," then damn betcha!

That's my notion of any non-plastic, Vanilla Clone sheet metal made after about 1998 and the only thing special about it is the very fine level of industrial engineering that went into its sheet metal for the mass production of sturdy, inexpensive computer cases and it's dimensions happened be exactly what I was searching for a Hack. Jony & the Steve coulda' learned a thing or two from that design team, not that they'd stoop to doing anything that practical, being so busy prettying up some hardware at times less impressive than what wound up in that utilitarian jerry can.

What makes even that particular spice free case special to me is that it's a breeze to stuff it with all kinds of random crap just for the hell of it . . .



. . . like so.

BTW, I never once claimed my case was a prototype of any kind, see title, it was a question. That question was prompted by finding an Apple logo stamped on the bottom of something installed within a case I bought years ago simply because it was the right width, was odd, interesting because of the crazy mods to the metal casing and it had a look of general usefulness.

Exploring the timelines and possibilities of its having been used for development, possibly even prototyping CHRP was instructional, good exercise for the imagination and a lot of fun, especially gorgonops's good natured, witty and educational snarkism.

If such offends you or any others, mea friggin' culpa . . . :

I had these pictures all prepped for the comparison yesterday, the cases are equally step-stool worthy and inexpensive. They're just constructed according to wildly differing design philosophies.

Enjoy gang. :approve:

I get the search for things like Douglas Adams' IIfx and Jobs' Apple II and prototypes.

It just seems odd that you'd put so much effort and thought into what we found out was a version of a PC case crammed inside a piece of industrial equipment, as though it was anything other than a regular PC running regular software, built into the larger enclosure of a particular piece of machinery (which was probably so easily identified because every town in the USA has at least ten of them scattered around, often in fairly public places and in a job that's not hard to get).

What makes even that particular spice free case special to me is that it's a breeze to stuff it with all kinds of random crap just for the hell of it . . .

Click to expand...

You could have done this with the retail version of this case. Heck, there are new cases out there that have room for all sorts of stuff. This has been standard in the DIY PC market for basically ever.

If such offends you or any others, mea friggin' culpa . . .

Click to expand...

I was just confused by the continued insistence that it was something special and that it had to have been used for something like CHRP platform development.

It's a nice case, I don't think anybody will say otherwise. It was just... really strong insistence that it was involved in prototyping that was odd.

OK, I see your point, but it was fun! It's an oddball case and I literally begged for someone to dash my flights of fancy . . .

It's a VERY cool case as opposed to the one in the comparison pics. Both are of a size to fit my collection of Radius Clone front bezels, that's why they're here. The taller, more boring one is also the perfect height, but I'm trying to finagle a way to get a small box and pan brake again so I can fab anything I desire once more . . .

. . . but I'd need to sell a lot of other toys and even a small brake is a very large and heavy toy. :-/

Let's put it this way, that Corsair case is very nice looking and has the features you'd want for an expensive new MoBo and to look good at a LAN Party, but to me it has no soul, not to mention the $139.00 hole it would put in my finances.

For an outlay of less than $40 for new trinkets, used crap and a CD off the 'Bay, I've had a boatload of fun playing Digital Junkyard Wars for two solid weeks now! Finding out that Apple actually started building quality cases before the love handle series was news to me. I learned a lot about the case my PEx board was intended to fill. It was finding that x600 Drive bay plate in the oddball case which made this tangential thread gravy to the meat and potatoes WinBox hacking I was doing. Added to that was a tasty side order of Atom Board/NetBook Remix fun-n-games while waiting for the Win98 CD to arrive as well.

I'm heading over to that thread again now, Win98 b in d HOUSE! [] ]'>

but to me it has no soul

Click to expand...

"Soul and character."

Also, I agree it's certainly not a cheap way to build a system out of >decade-old parts you've sourced to run a >decade-old operating system. I was pointing it out as the new shining example that funky not-quite-standard cases that have room for a lot of stuff have been standard for a while. (Despite the fact that this is a very new case, on the scene.)

Finding out that Apple actually started building quality cases before the love handle series was news to me.

Click to expand...

The 7200 and 8600/9600 enclosures, which both migrated to the Beige G3 (although, slightly shorter for the tower) have all been hailed as "pretty great" basically since they were new in 1995 and 1996/1997, and frequently receive the "way better than an 8500" award here on the forum, so it's interesting that somebody on the scene as long as you've been wouldn't have known.

Also, "love handles" cases?

I have a love/loath reaction to gamer cases and pretty cases, even from Apple, have always bothered me somehow. There's no accounting for taste. [] ]'>

I've torn up and tossed a LOT of curb-kickers and "here, you like to mess with computers, see what you can do with this old thing" donations over the last thirty years or so. I've got one of my 19.5x20x9 inch project boxen stuffed to almost overflowing with old motherboards that had some interesting feature or other. Just trying to nest another board with an impressive heat sink on it is like playing with an interlocking wooden puzzle. It's also a voyage of discovery, from "why did I ever keep this" to "what the hell is this Mac board doing in here" and WT . . .

Just learning that Intel's early ATX spec really had mixed ISA/PCI slot provisions was an interesting tidbit that came my way from research for this thread. It's one easy thing to dismiss something out of hand, but it's another thing entirely games of "what if and why not" with BF-109-G<->FlyingVespa pic analogies. Such nonsense can be entertaining and enlightening at the same time, especially with hazy memory brain teasers thrown into the mix. Again, it's that "taste thing."

. . . it's interesting that somebody on the scene as long as you've been wouldn't have known.

Click to expand...

You know how they say "seeing is believing," the way my noggin works "seeing is understanding." Verbal/.TXTual comments about something being "way better than the 8500" don't mean much to me. Besides, I've yet to see just about any case for just about any thing that's not way better than that turd. I've kept a bard 9500 chassis around just to laugh at it when I shove the 9600 PSU most of the way into it just to hear the PEx board's startup chimes every now and then. Now that the Plastic PEx drawer is set up, I wonder if I should recycle that thing. It's almost sad when even a plastic drawer from a rolling plastic chest of such for "organizing clutter" a/o closet storage bought at Tarjet is a better, if funkier, case design than that once top of the line 9500 chassis.

I've never had, butalways wanted a Drawbridge Case, but that 7200 thing strikes me as a very elegant piece of sheet metal design. But it's almost totally ruined by the clever but incredibly chintzy little breakaway plastic supports and that pair of retention tabs that just don't quite live up to the promise of the overall concept.

Hell, here in the U.S. toy chests are legally required to have better articulation engineering than that very expensive POS, albeit such legislation is meant to protect the priceless operators . . .

. . . but still. :

"love handles" cases?

Click to expand...

You know, the ones with midriff bulge and handles sticking out every which way.

Also, "love handles" cases?

Click to expand...

G3 B&W - G4 MDD, probably even G5 - Mac pro, but those are a bit more svelte :lol:

You forgot my favorite GRAPHITE band in the MetallicMac Spectrum . . .

. . . I feel a retro, metallic apple graphic coming up, emoticon time? [}] ]'>

Just learning that Intel's early ATX spec really had mixed ISA/PCI slot provisions was an interesting tidbit that came my way from research for this thread.

Click to expand...

Uhm... An ISA slot has the same case requirements as a PCI slot, IE, the slot cover height, screw location, and the dimensions of the "tail" on the lower end are are all identical; "AT" form-factor cases dating all the way back to the IBM AT (heck, back to the IBM XT, which other than mounting hole locations is essentially the same as the "Baby AT" form factor) have no problem accommodating PCI boards when fitted with a motherboard bearing the slots. The only difference is that when viewed from above (pick up the card by the bracket and hold it so you're looking at the top with bracket facing towards you) an ISA board is mounted "right-handed"-ly on the bracket while a PCI card is "left-handed". This helps guard against someone being stupid enough to try to cram a PCI board into an ISA slot; they can't because the connector won't line up. This is something the case doesn't need to care about and has nothing to do with ATX.

(Not saying that Intel might not have mentioned it in their ATX proposal, but I'm sure they were talking about board-level concerns, not the case.)

I've never had, butalways wanted a Drawbridge Case, but that 7200 thing strikes me as a very elegant piece of sheet metal design. But it's almost totally ruined by the clever but incredibly chintzy little breakaway plastic supports and that pair of retention tabs that just don't quite live up to the promise of the overall concept.

Click to expand...

Earlier in this discussion I threw out that comment about how sometimes "Cheap/Generic" clone cases are "better" than brand-name cases if your measure for "better" is "ruggedness". Things like Apple's PCI PowerMac cases are exactly what I was talking about. The designs are very clever and ergonomic and whatever but they're complicated composite structures that if damaged (by accident or compromised by ageing of their plastic parts) can come across as shabby and flimsy. By comparison there's not much to go wrong with a simple stamped-and-folded metal chassis as long as the manufacturer didn't skimp too much on the gauge of steel.

"love handles" cases?

Click to expand...

You know, the ones with midriff bulge and handles sticking out every which way.

Click to expand...

Great example of the above: Nicely designed and ergonomic, but also scratch, accident, and crack-prone. (Apple really oversold the durability of those polycarbonate plastic panels and handles.)

Anyway, working further backwards:

It just seems odd that you'd put so much effort and thought into what we found out was a version of a PC case crammed inside a piece of industrial equipment (*snip*)

What makes even that particular spice free case special to me is that it's a breeze to stuff it with all kinds of random crap just for the hell of it . . .

Click to expand...

You could have done this with the retail version of this case. (*snip*)

If such offends you or any others, mea friggin' culpa . . .

Click to expand...

I was just confused by the continued insistence that it was something special and that it had to have been used for something like CHRP platform development.

It's a nice case, I don't think anybody will say otherwise. It was just... really strong insistence that it was involved in prototyping that was odd.

Click to expand...

Ditto to all this. I have to say, Trash... your enthusiasm is great and all, but...

BTW, I never once claimed my case was a prototype of any kind, see title, it was a question.

Click to expand...

If you read back over this you're really splitting hairs trying to say you *didn't* claim it was a prototype. In response to every comment saying "it just looks like a regular old PC case to me" you *really* went overboard in trying to find things about it that made it "special", and further insisting that any and all evidence of it being special *could only* translate to it having once lived inside an amazing super-secret computer lab, and, going even further, because it happened to have a mismatched hunk of an Apple case associated with it it obviously *MUST* have been something related to CHRP or something.

(I'm sure you'll reply in the negative, and you may well be telling the truth, but are you absolutely sure *you* didn't shove that tray in there and subsequently forgot about it? You certainly make it sound at least like you've been absolutely swimming in random Mac bits-and-pieces for years, I can't help but think that might be how it ended up in there. You said you bought this thing years ago, right? Shoving the tray in there and forgetting about it is something I might do.)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I guess you can to some degree claim victory in being correct that the case was "special" because it was indeed modified for a specific purpose, but you were so absolutely *specific* in your claims about its specialness that, well... it fails the "reasonability" test.

If by this . . .
. . . you mean by a "standard ExcelBox," then damn betcha!

That's my notion of any non-plastic, Vanilla Clone sheet metal made after about 1998...

Click to expand...

So, here's the thing: your notion was wrong and you went totally to the mat refusing to believe it. (It's interesting that you can't believe that there might be people on this board who've seen the insides of more generic PCs from that era than you have.) Yes, that Enlight case might be made of sturdier stuff than that cheaper box but I'm sure 99%+ of them ended up as "standard ExcelBox"es too. I had that exact case, just like a few hundred thousand other people did, and, well... it was "born" in late 1999-ish, dual booted Linux and Windows-something (the latter used exclusively for playing Half-Life and other games) and was a completely normal desktop workstation for a few years. I passed it down whole in 2003 to someone who needed a computer, in part because I'd already determined that the case was too cramped/had insufficient cooling to be useful for upgrades much beyond the (overclocked) dual 400mhz Celeron board it housed since new. There's nothing magic about it. At all.

(I recall paying some small premium, $20-$30 or so, to get that Enlight case over the *really generic* case when I bought that Dual Celeron system. That's what some slightly clever drive bays and a couple tenths of a millimetre thicker steel were worth. Not much in the grand scheme of things.)

The manufacturer of those photo-processing machines undoubtedly picked it because it *was* so popular (IE, easily sourced), reasonably well-made, and of the right physical size to fit the space in their machine. It is interesting that the manual for the machine talks about the different specs they packed in there; I wonder if the sideways fan mod was a necessity because they discovered the same thing I did: the case was fine for CPUs up to the Pentium III ballpark but started getting too toasty when fitted with a Pentium IV. Perhaps it was cheaper/easier for them to fab the sideways fan bracket and cut holes then it would have been to find another case to fit the same spot so they stuck with the 7101 even when it wasn't strictly the best choice anymore.

In any case, there's no pixey-dust stuck to that case that's going to grant amazing industrial superpowers to whatever you put in it just because it happened to have a "cooler" purpose than playing endless games of Windows Solitaire in its original incarnation. It's just a chunk of obsolete steel. That would still apply even if it *had* been a prototype of some sort too, I guess, but I suppose bringing that up begs the question... so what if it *had* lived in a lab and had once housed some super-awesome-amazing Quantum SuperDupercooled 128 bit PowerPC CHRP2000 prototype board? Without the provenance to prove it (let alone the amazing super-board itself) you still have nothing. "I bought it from a thrift store in a town that has computer companies in it" doesn't cut it if you're looking for your million dollar lottery winner.

Exploring the timelines and possibilities of its having been used for development, possibly even prototyping CHRP was instructional, good exercise for the imagination and a lot of fun, especially gorgonops's good natured, witty and educational snarkism.

Click to expand...

*Snark*

It was fun and all, I guess, but eventually it gets on one's nerves trying to prove a negative. Oh well.

Forgot this:

Notice that there's no case cover in evidence in that shot. This is the kind of racked installation I've been envisioning for a case built like this one. Especially so with the extra RFI shielding clips my case has on the side edges, presumably for making contact with the walls in its little metal cage. The clip slots/sockets on the top with matching socket indentations on the bottom had me thinking mobile unit racking.

Click to expand...

Well, there's that other shot that clearly shows that the U-shaped case top *was* used:



If your case had been installed in the machine by the manufacturer *without* the top I seriously doubt you'd have it now. (How in the world would it have found its way to a reunion with the rest of the case when the PC was stripped out? And also, why would they bother notching the corner if it was never intended to be there anyway? You can see the notch there in this photo; I'm curious what those two cables coming out the notch do, of course, but that's clearly why the notch is there.) That picture of one showing the case without the top is probably a machine in the process of being stripped down. It's missing *all* the skins off the left corner and the case bezel, which should also be there on a complete unit.

As to those "extra" clips, my case had them too. They came in the accessory bag with all the screws, they're merely not installed on the one that's pictured on Newegg. They are indeed probably there to ensure the top gets grounded to the bottom for RFI reasons.

Actually... this comment here? It's actually really a perfect encapsulation of... why this flight of fancy gets a little frustrating. You're extrapolating *way* too far for each little thing you noticed on this hunk of metal, fitting it together in your mind with some pre-boiled concept of what something would have been used for if it had been a prototype (IE, that notch in the case being a "finger hole") or how you would build something if it were you doing it, etc. It's really not clear from this statement if you think that the manufacturer of the machine added the clips to the box and ran it sans-skins so they could also use some particular bump or notch on the chassis as part of its "racking system" and that photo of the machine with the skins on it is wrong, or just saying that's how you'd do it and here's a photo validating your idea. (Despite the overwhelming evidence, a part of which is actually in your hands, that they *didn't* do it that way and that the photo that does show the case sans-skins is a photo of a partially disassembled unit?) It's just a wee bit confounding, I do apologize for sometimes being too slow to distinguish when you're just saying something off the cuff verses asserting something as an actual hypothesis.

How about this comeback: you're right! :I

I really thought you were having more fun with it than you apparently were, sorry about that. I'll apologize for such stubborn insistence now, I do come by that honestly. I will mention that I've been a tad manic, hiding in the HackCave™ and more active here even than usual because of a couple of concerns IRL this past week or so. No excuse, maybe a mitigating circumstance?

It's not hard for me to realize or admit that a lot of my comrades here know their stuff where I don't. Heck, I can't imagine there's not something I can learn from every person I meet. Lots of people here have seen a lot of a lot more stuff and know more stuff than than I have or do about all kinds of stuff. That's why I hang out here and I know that sometimes I bring something to the table as well. Thanks to all for the input and I apologize also to those who just told me to stop . . .

. . . but I'm still glad I didn't, I wouldn't have learned all that neat new stuff! ;D

p.s. nope, I couldn't possibly have put it in there. I've never had, nor seen, a case that used that bracket and I remember seeing it in there when I bought the thing. That bracket looks like it belongs bolted up to the case front under casual observation. It was just about the only thing inside that case, the back 80% of that 3.5" Drive magazine clip and the wires connected to the front panel and dust being the exceptions.

Forgot this:

Notice that there's no case cover in evidence in that shot.

Click to expand...

Well, there's that other shot that clearly shows that the U-shaped case top *was* used:

Click to expand...

I was talking about the shot I marked up and posted:

If your case had been installed in the machine by the manufacturer *without* the top I seriously doubt you'd have it now. (How in the world would it have found its way to a reunion with the rest of the case when the PC was stripped out?

Click to expand...

Indeed.

Actually... this comment here? It's actually really a perfect encapsulation of... why this flight of fancy gets a little frustrating. You're extrapolating *way* too far for each little thing you noticed on this hunk of metal, fitting it together in your mind with some pre-boiled concept of what something would have been used for if it had been a prototype (IE, that notch in the case being a "finger hole") or how you would build something if it were you doing it, etc.

Click to expand...

I can't say for sure, but I don't think I argued that it couldn't be anything BUT a fingerhole. IIRC, I said it made a GREAT mod for a case that would see a lot of top-popping and that there was no retaining mechanism for a cover other than one of the twelve round punch holes on almost every accessible corner that you'd mentioned as being a possibility for such. You were dead with your theory, about that whack-doodle cable run. BTW.

It's really not clear from this statement if you think that the manufacturer of the machine added the clips to the box and ran it sans-skins so they could also use some particular bump or notch on the chassis as part of its "racking system" and that photo of the machine with the skins on it is wrong, or just saying that's how you'd do it and here's a photo validating your idea. (Despite the overwhelming evidence, a part of which is actually in your hands, that they *didn't* do it that way and that the photo that does show the case sans-skins is a photo of a partially disassembled unit?) It's just a wee bit confounding

Click to expand...

Again, because of a simple misunderstanding (do to my unclear/nonexistent referent for "that pic shows") we've both been a tad frustrated. I also wasn't clear enough that the case was empty when I found it. I hurriedly posted a passel of pics I took at lunch time without taking the time to remove the MoBo and PSU I'd bolted up to the wretched thing.

My pet theory about the case is that some OEM for Vertical Market integrators and all kinds of other applications was set up to mod a batch of these boxes for just about any purpose. The "finger hole" and fan mods wouldn't be something the Photo System mfr. would set up to do and the case mfr. couldn't be bothered to do such work, a jobber did it. That photo processing contraption is a huge mass of crap from over a dozen OEM's an specialty houses.

I do apologize for sometimes being too slow to distinguish when you're just saying something off the cuff verses assert something as an actual hypothesis.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I thought that was clear when I said something on the order of: CHRP development being the most interesting of improbabilities.

Thanks much for being generous in that apology, see above. [] ]'>

so its not a prototype mac case?

:lol: Good one!

After the first dozen posts or so it was eliminated as a possible Apple prototype.

EudiG, spent about a page talking me down from my CHRP WAG based upon coincidental IBM relocation to this area in that CHRP/ATX time frame.

Then I was pummeled from all directions for insisting it was intended for prototyping/general industrial use and not simply a standard beige Clone box.

g then proved it was in fact a standard box that had been a NewEgg product offering and then afterward . . .

. . . went on to discover a case proving that my particular case, so to speak, had indeed been modded for industrial use. :O

Go figure! ;D

Then I was pummeled from all directions for insisting it was intended for prototyping/general industrial use and not simply a standard beige Clone box.
g then proved it was in fact a standard box that had been a NewEgg product offering and then afterward . . .

. . . went on to discover a case proving that my particular case, so to speak, had indeed been modded for industrial use. :O

Click to expand...

Technically if someone had bothered to do an image search on "QSS-2901" per the leads found by snuci/MacJunky on page one it all could have been over right there. (I'm kicking myself for not having done so myself. I actually hit and scanned the same page as snuci when searching that "PC-NRT-5A" model number and didn't grasp what that page was going on about, IE, that the model number was associated with the *original* computer integrated into some sort of dingus, I just saw that the case of their upgrade machine was obviously different from the topic of discussion here. Unfortunately that mislead me into assuming that the model number was a coincidence and that it'd come from some long-dead whitebox puppy mill.) I suppose it wouldn't have necessarily settled the question of whether it was a bottom-up custom job made just for integrating into big heavy things that make loud noises or a slightly-modified off-the-shelf unit, but whatever. When I realized after your next big picture set that not only did this case look generically familiar, I'd owned the *exact same thing* it sort of turned into a mission to put a name to the face.

(Please bear in mind that the next time you find a hunk of junk like this in a thrift store it may indeed be impossible to do that. Unlike the case of Apple's products generic white-box PCs don't have hoards of obsessive fans that document every single aspect of every single model ever sold for future generations to wonder over. )

Sorry, I thought that was clear when I said something on the order of: CHRP development being the most interesting of improbabilities.

Click to expand...

I dunno, it came off more like "it's this and I won't take no for an answer unless it's proved beyond all metaphysical certainty it wasn't" to me, but I guess it was your favourite.

Today I took a picture of a different case, I am just going to leave it here:



This had winXP and a P4 or something IIRC.

or something

Click to expand...

Apple Project Marklar test box! After CHRP failed and it was obvious that PowerPC was no longer sufficient for the needs of the Macintosh, Apple clearly used this particular machine for testing Mac OS X 10.2/10.3 builds on, before ultimately making the switch decision at the last minute and announcing the Developer Transition Kit, which was obviously much better dressed.

[] ]'>

:lol: . . . but no apple logo.

Well of course, they had to keep it supar secret. [] ]'>

Totally. That missing front-panel area? That's where the self-destruct device, based on a modified airbag detonator, was located. It was set to go off (along with the shock collar around the developer's neck) if the box strayed more than 50 miles from Cupertino.

Anyway, I guess one more point about the subject of the OP:

My pet theory about the case is that some OEM for Vertical Market integrators and all kinds of other applications was set up to mod a batch of these boxes for just about any purpose. The "finger hole" and fan mods wouldn't be something the Photo System mfr. would set up to do and the case mfr. couldn't be bothered to do such work, a jobber did it. That photo processing contraption is a huge mass of crap from over a dozen OEM's an specialty houses.

Click to expand...

... You're right about a "jobber" doing it. The brand name on the case sticker, "CONTEC", belongs to a company that says they've been around for 30 years making industrial PCs. They're undoubtedly the guys who cut the holes. (And probably the ones that stuffed it with parts, per the photolab machine company's specs.)

When it comes to prototypes I guess I'll just have to be satisfied with the PEx board I got as a bonus for throwing down the min. bid capital to start the Big@$$Boxlot consortium to get that "prototype" of the last spherically correct pointing device that Apple never even bothered to produce.

HRMMM . . . does that actually qualify a Paladin KBD as a prototype, or the PEx board for that matter? Maybe they're more akin to X-Series aircraft that the Air Force wouldn't contract because they didn't do the Fighter Jock thing, being suited for practical stuff like the "Trash Hauling" all those DuoDeprived combination printer/copier/FAX machines that hit the market soon after the cancellation of the Paladin Project. The Air Force still refuses to embrace planes for Air Support, the six slots of the PowerExpress were like the wildly practical GAU-30 theWarthog is built around, better to build sleek jets like the Cube that was never really practical for the niche market stongholds of the Mac like SFX, video and sound recording production.

I feel better now, they ain't CHRP, but my X-Series pair stand up to "real prototypes" pretty well after all. [] ]'>

Totally. That missing front-panel area? That's where the self-destruct device, based on a modified airbag detonator, was located. It was set to go off (along with the shock collar around the developer's neck) if the box strayed more than 50 miles from Cupertino.

Click to expand...

Notice the carefully interlinked scale armor covering the balance of the exposed surface areas. That's gotta be to keep the curious developers out and all that factor inside the case. Spindly plastics too! :approve:

Anyway, I guess one more point about the subject of the OP:

< snip >

... You're right about a "jobber" doing it. The brand name on the case sticker, "CONTEC", belongs to a company that says they've been around for 30 years making industrial PCs. They're undoubtedly the guys who cut the holes. (And probably the ones that stuffed it with parts, per the photolab machine company's specs.)

Click to expand...

Thanks, I feel muuuuch better about having a Win98 ROM HackStation on the workbench for firmware . . . activities . . . [}] ]'>