"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."
Uhm, developers nail motherboards to whatever's handy, they don't get special things.
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.
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.")
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.
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.. . . and even better as an exercise in fantasy/imagination and curiosity! [] ]'>