From my personal experience it should be relatively easy to find old cases in NL. People generally have a lot stashed away in their attics, closets, garages, spare rooms et cetera. Just a matter of spending time locating items. There are also many flea markets where I would expect you would find items. Then there is
www.marktplaats.nl,
www.speurders.nl,
www.helpmij.nl,
www.tweakers.net and so on.
Also, the EU's largest market for vintage equipment is right next door:
www.ebay.de and so on.
Actually, I haven't seen a single AT case for sale on Queensday in Amsterdam and everyone I know tossed them a few years ago.
Things were different even only 3 to 4 years ago, then you could still find AT cases in second hand stores locally.
Now even if you find one, people want money for them while back then (3 to 4 years ago) you could get a complete untested AT computer for like €5.
The attics seem to have run dry of AT cases nowdays.
Edit:For crying out loud, most of my reply is gone -_-
Edit2:Rewrite
Problem is the amount of volume I move through here every week. I must scrap at least 10 boxes; some weeks (like last) it's closer to 30!
I see everything from IBM 5150's to Core2 systems for dissassembly. I keep the stuff I know I can resell (3GHz P4 stuff and up) but the rest, till now, has been going to scrap (aside from the XT stuff of course).
I'll set some things aside now and then but I really still don't know what's worth keeping.
-snip-!
No way I'm keeping cases, sorry guys! Unless someone needs a specific one that I can look out for.
You get the idea!
Ok, here I go again lol, since my last reply got messed up
Should I save every hard drive if it works 100%? Or only sub-1gb drives?
I'd keep the REALLY old and BIIIG heavy ones predating IDE.
When it comes to IDE it's often easier to just use an old CF card. The CF card is also much faster and more silent then an old harddrive.
Not sure about the SCSI ones though, but keeping <1GB SCSI drives seems somewhat pointless to me if you can as easily use a 9GB 50p SCSI drive using the same controller.
ISA cards... save them all? Save only video? 8bit?
There've been a wide variety of ISA cards made. Many may be near-valueless while others seem to be more expensive now then back when they were new!
Some ISA cards are definitely worth keeping like the Mach64, Roland and a couple other cards. ISA controller cards may also be of interest here, especially the more high-end ones
ISA had a very long run and many very odd cards were made like, for instance, computer-on-a-card cards.
Check all your ISA sound cards for daughterboards!
VLB cards... anyone use these at all?
Same as ISA, except that VLB was around for much shorter so you shouldn't find as many exotic cards made for that bus. Keep the higher end ones (Mach64 and certain controller cards).
There have been a few very unique VLB boards made, including a (flopped) 3D card.
5.25" floppy drives... aside from the full height stuff?
I'd say:
keep!!
These can basically only go up in value
Motherboards... 486 and back? P1 and back?
Keep the 486 and older boards. If the board has bad battery corrosion, scavenge for parts (CPU, cache modules etc etc) and toss the rest.
Most AT P1 boards are of very little interest, but there are exceptions. The Super 7 AT boards (like ASUS P5A-B) and AT Slot 1 boards (particularly BX) might hold some value, as might P1 VLB boards.
Also imo the Socket 4 boards should be worth keeping as it's the very 1st Pentium ever made and actually rarer then 486 VLB boards.
Keep
all Socket 8 AT boards unless they are obviously broken. Also keep the weird ones like Nexgen, Alpha etc.
Boards with upgradeable CPU sockets are always preferred to soldered chips, unless the board is 486 or older.
Most P1 boards however are the all too common VX, TX and non-AGP 3rd party chipsetted ones. Toss those.
Laptops... we get tons of P1/PII laptops. Sometimes older but not often. Worth bothering with?
If they are broken, don't bother with them.
If the laptop works but is missing it's harddrive
and harddrive bay, toss em. If the laptop harddrive bay is missing, it will be virtually impossible to find a replacement as those laptops often use proprietary hardware.
If you want to strip the laptops of parts, there usually isn't much to salvage. The harddrives I would strip. The laptop CPU's generally aren't as interesting, unless it's some kind of uncommon chip or a desktop replacement chip.
You could try selling the laptop CPU's on cpu-world.com, but last time I checked laptop CPU's aren't going for that much. And salvaging laptops for parts takes a lot of time (unlike desktop computers which can be pulled apart in under 10 minutes or so easily).
Well, hope that helps!
Edit2:I just wanted to point out 2 more things that came to my mind after posting.
1)When I mention AT board 486 and older, I was referring to standard AT (or more often, baby-AT) boards. Prior to that theres no telling if a board you have is proprietary or not. If it is proprietary, you will find a hard time finding a buyer wanting your particular board.
2)If you scrap a board, always remove the CPU's (and 486 cache modules) before binning and sell those on
www.cpu-world.com. With those old chips, even if noone buys them, you can sell the CPU's for scrap as they contain a lot of gold.
Edit3:
And 3)Keep all the standard PC 2.88MB floppy drives!
and internal SCSI ZIP drives and internal 750MB ZIP drives, along with USB ZIP/LS-120 and internal LS-120/240 drives.
Also keep SCSI optical drives