I work in a printing shop, and the issue you’re having with the color is likely due to the color profile. I recommend working in CMYK; the colors you see on the screen will be closer to what you print. If you send a file in RGB, the printer’s software will handle the conversion, and it might not look the same. Also, keep in mind that it will always appear darker and less saturated than on the screen.
I have a case kinda like this. It's an NEC Ready 9616. The 3.5" FDD is above the 5.25 bays. It's a P120 though and the motherboard has only one slot that a break-out board plugs into and the cards are mounted at the top and back of the case in a vertical orientation. I didn't get it when it was new but found it in a rubbish heap in front of a house that someone had recently moved out of about 3 years ago. Machine was dirty but is clean now and works just fine.
I had the exact same case as you showed as an other example. I had it from a local school, and IIRC, the dates were from the very early 1990s. It had a 286 board inside, running at 16 MHz, these low end computers were quite common in the early 1990s in (Czecho)Slovakia, since PCs were expensive for what the people were used to. Unfortunately I gave it away :( Later the BTX motherboard standard had this inverted design.
Great little computer. Fantastic that it hasn't had a battery leak its guts all over it. I can repair the battery bombed boards, but they never look as nice as factory due to my inferior soldering skills and such. You need to watch Necroware's videos on extracting the actual CMOS chips out of the Dallas modules. Then you can add a battery holder onto it, or maybe even solder the batter pins back on the dallas IC to use the motherboard battery header. Would love this one in my collection, but I live so far away and have way too many computers as it is.
HP made (or maybe still do) a lot of inverted cases in the mid 00's and 10's, not exactly sure why they thought it was a good idea but just about every single HP tower computer I encounter is inverted.
My mother owns a modern HP desktop, and it still has the inverted ATX design similar to an older AMD model I found. The Athlon X2 model uses a regular board and PSU form-factor with the chassis dating back to the Windows Vista era and seeing use well into the 2010s and Windows 10 era before getting replaced with the bespoke nonsense in the late '10s.
Nice little machine, and the case is in good shape IMO. Not yellowed at all ! I have a similar case where everything is upside down, same time period (486). The only "problem" is that the chips on the extension cards can potentially run hotter (but at that time heat was not really a problem).
I had a case like that at one point except it was a mid tower, not a mini. 4x 5.25" & 2x 3.5" bays, iirc. I always assumed the inverted layout was just to make the optical drives etc more accessible when it was sitting on top of a desk instead of under it. I think what made these cases go away was the ATX standard since that specified a lot more things regarding the layout of various things on the motherboard, etc which would have made this style of case impossible to conform to.
Had a Socket A AMD Abit MB. Put it together turned on the power and POP. The socket roasted some of the transistors around the die. Have a few AMD CPU's found a Brand new TYAN socket A MB ironically in the Abit box on my shelf. It also had the extra 4 pin CPU plug. It was fine. Got WIN98SE on it just for giggles. I still have a couple brand new never built MB for Pentium 2 slot 1. One Intel, 1 Asus and 1 Gigabyte. All still in the bags. Have the CPU's but don't think I am gonna build them anytime soon. Been building since 1995 a room in the basement looks like an old PC store.
I like these cases, they are different but their only issue is that sometimes, depending on the motherboard, the drive cage can get in the way of components. i.e. cpu fan/heatsink, mosfet heatsinks etc..
I had a very similar case that I built a PIII out of for a custom build. IIRC it's called "Ugly Pentium III build" or something like that on my channel.
I have a CM Stacker which is convertible from ATX to BTX, I don't know why BTX failed. I've seen a couple of other inverted cases over the years too. The owners didn't even know.
Don't throw away the botched dallas chip, the business end is really small, inside the potted casing and you can extract it and solder it on custom pcbs.
That processor socket isn't for a math coprocessor. It is for upgrading the board to a different CPU like a faster 486 or a Pentium Overdrive. The 486 already has a math co processor built in the CPU. Also, did you know that there are epoxies for plastic now? They bond to plastic better than standard epoxy.
I'm tempted.. but I don't know what I would do with it.. I was surprised to see you are just over the bay from me :) So pickup is an option, but what would I do with it lol
Nice case, the size of a mini tower. Can you put a link to your ebay shop? You do not cut the terminals (or at least the positive) of the internal battery in the Dallas chip? I did the mod many times, but once I was lazy and I let the internal battery connected. I ended changing the CMOS battery that I installed each month, until I remembered and cut the positive of the internal battery in the Dallas chip.
