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What make and model of AT Baby Tower is this?

T

ta0

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http://i63.tinypic.com/f0yasm.jpg

386 f0yasm.jpg

Not mine, found picture online.

I've seen this design / look of AT case / minitower / babytower in different variants, including giant pillars with 7 or more ISA slots. They seem to have been very common and cheap, and are often simply called "generic tower" when they show up on eBay. They were common in Europe in the late 80s / early 90s and apparently in the US as well. I think the one in the picture is actually a mid-tower and the baby tower only had a single 5.25" bay. Not sure.

Who made them, what are they called, and where can I buy a baby tower variant?

(Should I move this thread to PCs and Clones?)
 
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Baby AT is the form factor of the motherboard. It derived from the IBM AT motherboard but trims about 3 inches from the width.

Many minitowers were designed to use Baby AT motherboards. A full AT motherboard won't fit. There is no official definition for full tower, midtower, minitower or specialty tower. I have smaller towers from A-Open and Shuttle. Shuttle specialized in the smaller form factors.

Roughly speaking: A full tower has 4 or more external 5.25" bays plus 3.5" external and lots of internal bays. Minitower has typically 2 or 3 5.25" external bays and some external 3.5" and often 2 internal bays. The single 5.25" external bay tower was uncommon in Baby AT era since many users wanted both CDROM and 5.25" floppy.

More commonly, the cases with minimal bays was designed to use the tiny LPX motherboard which had a riser for slots. LPX motherboards are generally awful designs with hard to reach components and needing a special power supply.

Are you absolutely positive you can't accept that extra drive bay?
 
They were still known as Baby Towers, Mid Towers, Full Towers back in the day, iirc. Remember, before always-on smartphones with Wikipedia, life wasn't an eternal spelling bee! :) You could get away with a lot of less than stellar logic with regards to computers. Oh how the times have changed!

I'm looking for a particular model of case, that looks EXACTLY like the one in the picture, except with one less 5.25" bay. Afaik, it was called a Babytower, right or wrong (what you're saying makes sense, so I guess it's wrong, but still). This was used with a Giga-byte GA-386SX motherboard, and the display card was a Pennel AT-17B. Fwiw. The monitor was a Samtron SC-431VS, I think. So it was not used with a Shuttle HTPC board, for sure!

But I'm also looking for any information about this style of case, who made them, who sold them, etc.

Not general information about form factors or computer cases. This was a particular design, it was cheap and common but had a particular style with regards to the ventilation port style at the bottom front, with regards to the greenish/grayish color scheme, the type of buttons, etc. I think different manufacturers slapped their own logo in the white space in the picture. So some kind of OEM deal?
 
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Heh, if its not a full tower then its not a real computer :p I've got one of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Full-Size-A...-IBM-PC-386-486-Pentium-Vintage-/172274751869

Just from the style I'm guessing it might be the same manufacture as the one in your picture. But these were typically manufactured by no-name Taiwanese companies and then resold by many different parts providers in the US. Might have gotten mine through JDR Microdevices. But usually neither the box or the case itself would have a brand name on it. And any case badge would be from a reseller or local system builder. Back then building them yourself from parts like these could save you piles of money and wind up with a sometimes superior and often more versatile machine than a big names like Compaq, Dell, Gateway, etc.

As for finding them, there is always eBay. But you might have to buy a complete system with the case you like and go up against 100 others that want the same machine. Keywords can be tricky, for example, selecting AT Case in Vintage Computing only returns a few items: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odk...A0.H0.Xat+case.TRS0&_nkw=at+case&_sacat=11189
These kinds of tower cases were often used on 386, 486, AMD 5x86, K6, and Pentium 1 class computers, searching for those kinds of systems might help.
 
SomeGuy said:
As for finding them, there is always eBay.
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Yes, I've been trawling ebay and similar sites for some time, but it seems you have to spend every second of your life there... And a name would help. I think you are correct with no-name Taiwanese manufacture, the system i want to replicate fits your description to a tee, it was a custom build. But I was hoping perhaps one of the larger electronics resellers (like I don't now, Mouser? Or Radio Shack?) would have used it.
 
ta0 said:
http://i63.tinypic.com/f0yasm.jpg

View attachment 32547

Not mine, found picture online.

I've seen this design / look of AT case / minitower / babytower in different variants, including giant pillars with 7 or more ISA slots. They seem to have been very common and cheap, and are often simply called "generic tower" when they show up on eBay. They were common in Europe in the late 80s / early 90s and apparently in the US as well. I think the one in the picture is actually a mid-tower and the baby tower only had a single 5.25" bay. Not sure.

Who made them, what are they called, and where can I buy a baby tower variant?

(Should I move this thread to PCs and Clones?)
Click to expand...

My 386 case is very very close to the one in your picture. It's what I call a "Harry Schwartz" brand. There must have been thousands, maybe millions of those cases back in the day. Very popular with system integrators and hobbyists alike. Note about 2/3 of the way down and on the left of your picture, there seems to be a white 'box'. Mom and Pop PC shops as well as OEMs used to stick small plastic like logos in that area. I think paid about $20 or so a few years ago for my mini tower, and it came with a power supply.
 
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ta0 said:
But I was hoping perhaps one of the larger electronics resellers (like I don't now, Mouser? Or Radio Shack?) would have used it.
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Well, back in the day JDR Microdevices was a fairly large reseller, I would go back and check some of the catalogs but I expect I would only find a text entry saying "Full tower case, bla bla bays, bla bla power supply, bla bla slots... $xxx.xx" It would often be a crap shoot as to precisely what style you got or what no-name company made it.

I've been all over my full tower case like the one I linked above and literally saw no name on it or anything that would really identify it. If you look at that full tower I linked to in the eBay listing, they even show what appears to be the original box - and again, no name.
 
i know I had two at one time cause I had a what you would call a NAS now, one for the 166mhz pentium that was mostly empty aside from a 4x cd burner and a tape drive and another housing and powering the raid of scsi hard drives

it was a very generic case with who knows how many makers / sellers / etc should be easy to find, just not by name
 
So, are you guys pretty certain that this tower never came in a variant with only one 5.25" slot, that is, one less than the one pictured? You sure?
 
ta0 said:
So, are you guys pretty certain that this tower never came in a variant with only one 5.25" slot, that is, one less than the one pictured? You sure?
Click to expand...
The only person who can, with 100% certainty, state that no such configuration existed, would be someone who:
* was in Taiwan for the many years that these kinds of cases were produced; and
* was in a position to observe every different case that each of the manufacturers was producing.

And if such a person did exist, and still lives, then if they didn't record their observations at the time, their long-term memory can be called into question.
 
@Stone

Ok, like wtf. I hate asking questions on the internet these days, because it has become full och aholes who apparently have infinite amounts of time to post snarky, stupid replies for no other reason than their own sad self-gratification.

And you're not even clever!

I asked if you guys were pretty sure there was not a particular model made. Was that a reasonable question? Yes, because you can reason about whether there exists any particular reason why that would NOT be made. Earlier in the thread, user Kreibzfan made an informative post, but wrote "The single 5.25" external bay tower was uncommon in Baby AT era since many users wanted both CDROM and 5.25" floppy". Uncommon != non-existant, and I have vague memories of it existing.

modem7's answer was pretty useless, like, duh, you have to be 100% certain to be 100% certain, wow, completely relevant... But you, Stone, are just an ahole.

I have a question about a vintage computer, on a forum about vintage computers, and you think you're clever for making fun of me for asking about vintage computers?!!! Why are you here?!! You don't know anything, you waste everybody's time, you are a total d-bag!
 
ta0 said:
@Stone

Ok, like wtf. I hate asking questions on the internet these days, because it has become full och aholes who apparently have infinite amounts of time to post snarky, stupid replies for no other reason than their own sad self-gratification.

And you're not even clever!

I asked if you guys were pretty sure there was not a particular model made. Was that a reasonable question? Yes, because you can reason about whether there exists any particular reason why that would NOT be made. Earlier in the thread, user Kreibzfan made an informative post, but wrote "The single 5.25" external bay tower was uncommon in Baby AT era since many users wanted both CDROM and 5.25" floppy". Uncommon != non-existant, and I have vague memories of it existing.

modem7's answer was pretty useless, like, duh, you have to be 100% certain to be 100% certain, wow, completely relevant... But you, Stone, are just an ahole.

I have a question about a vintage computer, on a forum about vintage computers, and you think you're clever for making fun of me for asking about vintage computers?!!! Why are you here?!! You don't know anything, you waste everybody's time, you are a total d-bag!
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If you wouldn't resort to name calling you'd probably be more successful in your search for information.
 
No name calling, just stating the facts.

And yeah sure, all your snark is so very helpful.
 
PB180057.jpgthermaltake_innen.jpgLots of cases started out with the same metalwork (expensive part) and just used slightly or drastically different face plastics.

I have an old server case made by Casetek and the company eventually sold its tooling to Thermaltake. Same metal and layout inside just different plastics (or metal doors) outside.
 
Ok, I'm trying to find / buy a case like the one pictured in the first post, but I believe the one I'm looking for had one less 5.25" bay. I'm not completely sure about that, but it just doesn't look right, it looks like it has one slot too many from what I remember.

If you guys are saying that it was unusual to lack that slot because of a need for CD-ROM + 5.25", might that help date the case I'm looking for? I can not remember CD-ROMs being common at all, at least not in my part of the world. 5.25" floppies were little used, but everybody had the drive to read them. CD-ROMs came a few years later. Perhaps the guys who put the computer together was able to buy single-bay cases for cheap if they were the end of an era?

The reason it's important is that I might remember this whole thing wrong; my memories of the early 1990s are a bit vague, unsurprisingly. No use to keep looking for a single-bay system if they only exist in my imagination.
 
ta0 said:
Ok, I'm trying to find / buy a case like the one pictured in the first post, but I believe the one I'm looking for had one less 5.25" bay. I'm not completely sure about that, but it just doesn't look right, it looks like it has one slot too many from what I remember.

If you guys are saying that it was unusual to lack that slot because of a need for CD-ROM + 5.25", might that help date the case I'm looking for? I can not remember CD-ROMs being common at all, at least not in my part of the world. 5.25" floppies were little used, but everybody had the drive to read them. CD-ROMs came a few years later. Perhaps the guys who put the computer together was able to buy single-bay cases for cheap if they were the end of an era?

The reason it's important is that I might remember this whole thing wrong; my memories of the early 1990s are a bit vague, unsurprisingly. No use to keep looking for a single-bay system if they only exist in my imagination.
Click to expand...

Tell you what I know. I've had a bunch of mini towers and I've don't remember seeing one with just one 5.25" bay. That's not to say they didn't exist, possibly just not very popular. Lot of people were still playing with MFM drives back then and one of those 5.25 bays is where that old boat anchor would go. Do you recall the AT rails and such? If you desire a lower profile case, how about the desktop style case? I never like them either but I still have a few gathering dust.
 
If I'd known you wanted one like 20 years ago... I wouldn't have recycled the 8 or so I picked up at various computer shows back when they were new. These were cool though, as most of them allowed configuration of the LED panel. You could make the 7 segments say any two things you wanted to within the confines of a 2-digit 7 segment LED panel, one would show in Turbo mode, one in non-turbo. I still remember configuring the DIP switches.
 
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