The PC hardware fads and fashion thread

[Dos_Box]

Following on from @jthompson post here, I feel it would be an excellent idea to take a trip down Folly Lane and talk about all of the terrible, terrible PC\laptop fashions that has gone on since the late 90's.

I'll start with the enormous tower PC with 6 drive bays with removable IDE caddies containing 10-20GB hard drives and required some kind of MHE to move from room to room. Floors may also have neeed some reinforcing too.

 

These would also be kitted out with a Zip drive and two optical drives. The inside looked like an explosion in a tagliatelli factory and you had a PCI IDE card added to handle the extra drives.

The streetlights outside may also have dimmed when you switched it on.

 

 

So, over to you, did you get suckered into any PC\laptop fashion fads, just becuase it looked cool...for 6 months?

[synaesthesia]

Yes, but longer than 6 months. Coolermaster Stacker case, complete with front panels for fan controls, SBLive! breakout, twin floppies, twin DVDRW and some VU meter things which passed through the audio and served no purpose other than to make audio crackle

[FN-GM]

Remember when some PC cases had keys hey keys to control the power button? Never actually saw one being used.

 

[Dos_Box]

Yes, but longer than 6 months. Coolermaster Stacker case, complete with front panels for fan controls, SBLive! breakout, twin floppies, twin DVDRW and some VU meter things which passed through the audio and served no purpose other than to make audio crackle

 

Ah yes, pointless front panel break out boxes, everything from audio and temp monitors to fan controls (I have a fan controller in the attic somewhere). None of which added much unless by way of distraction. I kinda like todays trend for minamalist cases.

[Hamster]

I like old PC cases, I have one with a integrated VU Meter.

 

Most of my retro machine make the lights flicker when they turn on, then once they turn off the lights return to full brightness. Though not sure is just just for my room or for the whole street..........

[ovenchips]

Those towers were mind blowing to me as a young nerd back in the day - my uncle had a "business" supplying the town with CDs of questionable legality, and would have 4-5 discs burning at once with one of these, albeit with 9X's handling of disc burning, they'd all come out as coasters if you dared to even move the mouse whilst they were burning!

The fad I fell for the most was probably the surge of 5.25" Bay "Gadgets" throughout the mid 2000s, fan controllers, audio out panels and the like, which would just make your case look like some sort of dodgy car stereo system. I had an NZXT Sentry 2 for a short period, but it was absolutely pointless as the case was under my desk and barely visible at the best of times. Then PWM fans came along and made it all completely pointless anyways. LGR did a great video on filling out an entire tower with them recently, from fake VU meters and speakers to a cigarette lighter!

Edited July 9, 2024 by ovenchips

[Jaan]

"Modified" PC Cases from the early '00s with perspex that scratched when you looked at it pre RGb and cold cathode lighting.

 

You could buy these in a kit for about £40 with case,"900w" PSU, keyboard mouse and speakers.

 

Good times

 

[jthompson]

Sometimes a design style is so influential that there is a huge wave of tat that seeks to ape it. No early-2000s workplace was complete without a load of this kind of stuff:

 

[Norphy]

Remember when some PC cases had keys hey keys to control the power button? Never actually saw one being used.

 

[ATTACH]71841[/ATTACH]

 

That wasn't to control the power button, it was to lock the keyboard! The Baby AT cases at the time had actual power switches which physically interrupted the power supply. There wouldn't have been a way to lock the power button I don't think.

 

I also remember those LCDs on the front of the computer which displayed the clock speed of the computer with a lot of fondness. I remember being irritated when I upgraded to a 200MHz CPU and the display max being 199

Edited July 9, 2024 by Norphy

[jthompson]

This picture of the Creative Jukebox sums a lot up for me for the late 90's, early 2000's. This was around the time of the early iPods, when they were ferociously expensive and still used FireWire rather than USB.

 

'Silver' [plastic] slender oval buttons.

Blue LED light.

Plastic fascias accented with bold curves (CAD processes really got into their stride in the product design sphere around that time).

Tech that was not quite ready for mainstream adoption - still a nerdy niche, but getting closer to something normal people might actually end up wanting.

 

[ovenchips]

"Modified" PC Cases from the early '00s with perspex that scratched when you looked at it pre RGb and cold cathode lighting.

 

You could buy these in a kit for about £40 with case,"900w" PSU, keyboard mouse and speakers.

 

Good times

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71840[/ATTACH]

 

Ooh and don't forget custom fan grills - you either had a normal bar grill, or some sunday market ninja star looking thing on all of those case windows covering up a fan with LEDs that could light an entire street

[Norphy]

This picture of the Creative Jukebox sums a lot up for me for the late 90's, early 2000's. This was around the time of the early iPods, when they were ferociously expensive and still used FireWire rather than USB.

 

'Silver' [plastic] slender oval buttons.

Blue LED light.

Plastic fascias accented with bold curves (CAD processes really got into their stride in the product design sphere around that time).

Tech that was not quite ready for mainstream adoption - still a nerdy niche, but getting closer to something normal people might actually end up wanting.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71844[/ATTACH]

 

The Nomad predated the iPod by a little iirc. I remember a line from Slashdot when the iPod was released:

 

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame

 

That aged well.

[jthompson]

"Lame"

 

Oh wow. That word alone places us right into the period.

[JJonas]

PCMCIA

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCMCIA

 

[PotNoodleTech]

Lian Li cases.

 

I used to think I was the daddy back in the day with my PC70 with hot swap SCSI drives that I couldnt fit in my mini to take to lan partys.

 

[jthompson]

"Ergonomic" is a word I very much associate with the late beige period.

[CHiLL]

PC gaming cases with an oversized case fan.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71846[/ATTACH]

[Dos_Box]

PCMCIA

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCMCIA

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71845[/ATTACH]

 

I does beg the question, did anyone use them for anything other than ethernet or wifi?

Or, heaven forbid, a dial up modem?

[Dos_Box]

"Ergonomic" is a word I very much associate with the late beige period.

 

'Right angles' are another two!

 

ETA: And 'where are the plasters?' any time you attempted to work inside of one.

[Norphy]

I had a Lian-Li case, the one closest to it on there was a PC60. It cost me £180 back in 1999 and it was a thing of beauty. I really regretted changing it but I wanted something a tad bigger and the Enlight cases my workplace sold at the time were too tempting to pass on.

[3s-gtech]

I does beg the question, did anyone use them for anything other than ethernet or wifi?

Or, heaven forbid, a dial up modem?

Adding USB 2.0 ports to an old Compaq Armada M700

Sure I had a floppy drive somewhere that used it

[Norphy]

Adding USB 2.0 ports to an old Compaq Armada M700

Sure I had a floppy drive somewhere that used it

 

I sold a lot of Compact Flash adapters which used that form factor too.

[sigma]

I used to use something similar to this in the early 90’s.

 

[synaesthesia]

I was rather fond of some of the old heatsink/fan combos. Zalman's were usually heads and tails above the others - not always in performance but certainly in looks. The Flower was particularly good!

[Oaktech]

PCMCIA

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCMCIA

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]71845[/ATTACH]

 

PCMCIA was where it was at.

 

Waaaaaay back in the day part of my remit was staff training across the 5 sites the company I worked for had. To do that I had a PDA (Ooooh, there's another fad right there) - LG Phenom and then an HP Jornada - that *only* had a PCMCIA slot so the ethernet card went in it, the dialup modem went in it, the compact flash adapter went in it, I even had a PCMCIA VGA adapter that was great for doing powerpoints on the move!

Edited July 9, 2024 by Oaktech