Origin is selling a retro-inspired beige box PC

Hmmmm....I think I would gut and do a Compaq 5150 case or similar. Those computers were terrible, but their cases were at least interesting for their time.
 
bman212121 said:
The thing for me is I somewhat doubt the validity of this combination. This might have a nostalgia look but I've personally never seen something with these components together. Technically yes there is a small window where something like this could have existed, but it seems an unlikely combination.

The odd choice here is the AT style tower case. (It has a physical power switch, which was removed in favor of a "soft switch" for ATX) That's not a common thing to begin with, so having a cd-rom internally just makes it even less likely. If this were real I'd probably guess it's an 80386 unless there actually were some 486 motherboard that were AT and not ATX. That would also move it closer to using tower cases and CD-Rom drives. Otherwise the AT plus 5.25" floppy would point more toward 286 or early 386.

I wouldn't want this case simply because it doesn't seem authentic. Remove the CD drive and make it a flat desktop or remove the 5.25" and AT switch and leave it as a tower. Sure you could have a 5.25" drive in a tower but I could still hook one to core i7. It was very rare to see one in a tower as most moved on by the time towers were popular.
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I had a 486 DX that was AT and had a physical toggle switch(definitely was early, I believe it was a DX-33 had a daughterboard with a separate math co-processor to get 66Mhz). However my first thought was that the early style 5 1/4 floppy with the lever definitely clashed with the 486/early pentium era CD-ROM drive, don't think I ever saw those two together even on a Frankenstein PC.
 
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Axman said:
Those totally overlapped; if anything, the CD sticks out. Those were *expensive*.
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I knew people with those style floppies when I also knew people with CD-ROMs but the floppies were in old 286s(maybe an odd 386 or two) and never had a CD-ROM too.

Edit: Might just be me but that stood out as wierd to me.
 
Got some decent cases up on ebay for the same or less with shipping, if you don't mind modding. Even have a complete commadore enclosure (minus the electronics) for peanuts.
 
SparcStation? Sure.
Ancient Macs? Hell yeah.
IBM PS/2 Model 80 or whatever? Yup, I can get behind it.
Cray? You betcha.
Generic-Beige PC? I personally hold no interest in it, but if it tickles your pickle, more power to ya.
 
Ebernanut said:
I knew people with those style floppies when I also knew people with CD-ROMs but the floppies were in old 286s(maybe an odd 386 or two) and never had a CD-ROM too.

Edit: Might just be me but that stood out as wierd to me.
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That's the part I agree with. If you had a CD-Rom drive you likely weren't using 5 1/4" drives in that pc. I have fond memories of copying the install files for Falcon 3.0 off a cd and onto a 3.5" floppy in a pentium machine, going to a 286 that had both a 3.5" and 5.25" floppy and transferring those files to the 5.25" disk so I could put the disk into a 3rd 286 that I actually wanted to play the game on. (Not because I needed to obviously, but I wanted to put that minimum spec to the test and fiddle around with another system I had laying around)

I'm sure people did have all 3 in some systems, but I'm not so sure they bought one that way versus they added it in later. But if people are saying they had AT on 486 then that does lend a bit more credibility to the crossover. It's honestly been so long that I'm even vague on some of those details anymore.
 

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bman212121 said:
That's the part I agree with. If you had a CD-Rom drive you likely weren't using 5 1/4" drives in that pc. I have fond memories of copying the install files for Falcon 3.0 off a cd and onto a 3.5" floppy in a pentium machine, going to a 286 that had both a 3.5" and 5.25" floppy and transferring those files to the 5.25" disk so I could put the disk into a 3rd 286 that I actually wanted to play the game on. (Not because I needed to obviously, but I wanted to put that minimum spec to the test and fiddle around with another system I had laying around)

I'm sure people did have all 3 in some systems, but I'm not so sure they bought one that way versus they added it in later. But if people are saying they had AT on 486 then that does lend a bit more credibility to the crossover. It's honestly been so long that I'm even vague on some of those details anymore.
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Yeah, I had a 5.25" drive in my compaq pentium 75 computer (which I now remember had an at style power button), but that drive was harvested from our tandy 1000 tl/2 (286 based, but 8-bit only isa), and my dad had broken the 3.5" drive on that, so all our games were on 5.25" :)
 
Ebernanut said:
I knew people with those style floppies when I also knew people with CD-ROMs but the floppies were in old 286s(maybe an odd 386 or two) and never had a CD-ROM too.
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In 486 days it was 5.25- and 3.5-inch floppies that overlapped. It wasn't until Pentium and realistically Pentium II when it shifted to 3.5-inch floppies and CDs.
 
Axman said:
In 486 days it was 5.25- and 3.5-inch floppies that overlapped. It wasn't until Pentium and realistically Pentium II when it shifted to 3.5-inch floppies and CDs.
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I recall CD-ROMs coming out late during the 486 era but for the most part I agree, mt 486 certainly had both floppies and no cd-rom.

I noticed that I skipped over a key part of my earlier comment though, I was taking issue with the earlier style of 5 1/4 drive being combined with a CD-ROM more than anything else. Those floppy drives with the big thick black lever were an older style that IME were low density drives that came 386 or earlier PCs, the 5 1/4 drives that I saw with 486s and later 386s had smaller levers that were beige or grey to match the rest of the front.

It's not like they couldn't have been put together but it doesn't seem representative of any single era of PCs.
 
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Ebernanut said:
It's not like they couldn't have been put together but it doesn't seem representative of any single era of PCs.
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Oh for sure. It was easy to get rid of the 5.25-inch floppy since it was legacy hardware by the '90s, and most software already shipped on both floppy formats. Windows 95 was sold on 3.5-inch floppies, along with most any other boot stuff.

And picking up a CD-ROM was a no-brainer. I think Myst single-handedly sold more CD-ROMs than anything else. I remember seeing them packaged side-by-side at stores.

The CD-R was way too expensive when it came out. But the CD-RW was attainable, even when media cost, like, $5/ea. Still, it wasn't until the USB drives became a thing, I'd argue, that the 3.5-inch floppy went away.
 
Parents have DOS 3.1 iirc on 3.5" floppy, and MegaMan 10 on 3.5+5.25.
 
Never did like the beige but Wow, that thing seems a big joke. Front decal and all. No working floppy drive don't care ("buzz .buzz ... click click")
Been gaming heavily on my year 2000 era Win98 voodoo4 rig lately and posted a couple shots in the 'No Talking' thread. All hardware bought back in the day. No need for that thing.
 
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keke said:
Love it, have an IBM 5160 in the attic waiting patiently for restoration job. Had an experience with flying&burning tantalum capacitors, heard these are prone to such firework display

However, love this case for some reason:

https://ancientelectronics.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/386alt.jpg?w=510&h=679
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My neighbour had one of those lol, I think they put their K6-2 in it and I got his old 486 on loan until we got a new pc.

I always liked the ones with the twist-screw power button on the front, I think alienware used them for a little while before they started with the roller door ones. I can never remember the brand though.
 
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I have two of those cases. Both with 386DX-33/44MHz boards in them with a whopping 4mb of RAM and 8MB of RAM (overkill for a 386),
 
LukeTbk said:
This unlike the NES that looked great then and great now, I do not see this having much appeal.

There is some nostalgia from previous PC era, I doubt the beige plastic (to fit the cubicle aesthetic of the days that also has very little nostalgy going for it) has much appeal, unlike say vector monitor it feel just all around inferior in everyway.
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That is why they only made 50.
 
I like retro and I would build a 486 or early Pentium dos gaming PC (with all the bells and whistles that I could not afford back then) in a heartbeat if I had the space but this... this looks just sad. Stickers, really? Considering how much Origin rigs cost and being a limited edition they could not even bother to source 3D Printed fake floppy fronts? Not to mention an actual DVD/Bluray drive that are still widely available and cheap as chips!?
 
DogChainX said:
I have two of those cases. Both with 386DX-33/44MHz boards in them with a whopping 4mb of RAM and 8MB of RAM (overkill for a 386),
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thinking now to do a Socket 4 build using one of those cases, have to check if AT motherboard fits
 
never really down with beige PC or anything else

black case
black Blu-Ray drives
lots of blinky lights things on the inside
 
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