Most beautiful desktop case in the world ?
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- In this quick video we're going to be looking at this Vobis Highscreen Kompakt Serie III desktop case.
I will be parting ways with this computer so only had 1 day to make a quick video on it ... hope you enjoy it and we might see it again on the channel someday,
#retro #computer #vobis
I like how loud the hard drives use to sound, lets you know that your computer is actually doing something. I once had a dying hard drive that sounded like a generator when it started up but once it got going and warmed up it did "quiet" down somewhat, lasted a few years then gave up the ghost.
The clacking heads I could live with. The whining spinning sound however was like a drill going through my skull. I was so happy once drives started getting fluid barrings in them.
I'm gonna make an ambient SCSI spin background noise track sometime in my future. Nerd ambien.
Also really like the sound of these drives. Just gives everything a lot more character.
The rainbow effect on start-up it's so nice. 😆
It's nice ... but not normal I think :)
Beauty IS in the eye of the beholder... I wouldn't argue that this isn't a good looking case for sure!
With older CD drives, like this Creative, you can test them with audio CD using buttons on front panel. At least you'll have some idea whether drive is able to read (TOC and tracks) or is mechanically fine.
There’s no play button on most of the Matsushita drives.
My guess is the driver was looking on the wrong IO port and interrupt. You have to modify the config_sys line accordingly:
DEVICE=OAKCDROM_SYS /D:MSCD001 /P:1F0,14
or
DEVICE=OAKCDROM_SYS /D:MSCD001 /P:170,15
... depending on whether the drive is installed on the primary or secondary IDE controller.
Frankenstein pc? Mobo and cpu from 1997 and video card from 1993. This computer at computer case scream for 386 motherboard original configuration, on the other hand 166mmx screams for voodoo1 and early 3D experience:)
21:00 - I experienced that multicolor effect on startup Windows 95 and 98 screens with several quite old video cards (ISA and early PCI ones). Games and desktop were not affected though.
As about this Creative CD reader, I would try other dviver, like UDVD2. In past I encountered problems getting optical drive (old and weird 2x Toshiba drive) to work on IBM PS/Valuepoint 325T/S and it was only driver it worked in that machine.
The cdrom is atapi compliant and should work fine. But perhaps an older driver would work a little better. The 98 driver was problematic for some matsushita drives for me back in the day.
@@wishusknight3009 yes, indeed. But mine also was atapi compliant and worked fine in other machine on standard oakcdrom drivers. Maybe it also up to controller as well.
@@86smoke That is a possibility. And how the master slave is configured. I would bet the VP1 may have some gremlins as well.
@@wishusknight3009 it is a single channel with master hdd and slave cdrom. And even if I use sound card atapi controller the problem persists (cdrom working only on udvd2 drivers). Maybe it is also bios involved.
@@86smoke Those cdroms do slightly better on the secondary channel on their own. But it probably wont make a difference. And sound card controllers are often their own bizarre thing. This is a among the earliest of atapi drive so maybe it may even be not quite compliant. And they made changes to the drives as they went through runs of them. Like with their bios as you say.
Nice, my parents had this PC for their business in the 90s. I remember playing games on it. It was awesome.
I'm pretty sure this model (it was the 16 Mhz model though) was the very first PC my parents bought (and I used a lot) when I was a kid... I have fond memories of this computer
I love the front - I still miss a PC with a turbo button for those really speed-sensitive 80s games.
I really hated that type of case.. Its just limited in expension. The case has only 6 expension slots. No room for 3.5 inch hdd.. These where really the budget line from vobis.
@@rallyscoot I always wanted a case that had the PSU and drives on the other side of the motherboard, this would make it rather cube shaped, but everything would be instantly accessable, I made one out of wood back then and was very small, I don't think it was ever commercially invented, I want to try this again even smaller with riser cables so expansion cards lay flat but Isa ones don't exist and I'm not looking forward to make my own
The turbo button and key lock just scream the 80s. Love it!
Good looking machine .
The first job I had in the industry was in a local PC shop, selling Octek. I remember them being of pretty high quality and considered one of the better white-box brands. My first couple of games computers were Octek.
Gorgeous case. Love that retro badge! And the Creative drive.
I liked how Compact is spelled Kompakt. couldn't tell if they were just being edgy with incorrect spelling or if that was some European way to spell it. Kind of a bummer about the 386 not being in there, just more interesting than a socket 7 if you ask me though S7 is certainly more versatile. To be honest there was a time I was so sick of S7 boards cause I was finding so many but these days I'm happy whenever I come across anything older than a P4.
I have 4 big boxes full of motherboards I still have to go through. But 70% will be (super) socket 7. Anything older is really rare. You have to stumble on old systems as people aren't selling this hardware anymore. Not for normal prices at least.
This PC is more powerful than my first one (Pentium 100 16MB RAM, S3 Virge Onboard 1MB, SB 16). I loved playing AOE1 and Populous 3 on that thing - used to be in elementary school back then. I had no idea that one day I'd become a Gentoo user…
Love that transition, I loved to draw dinosaurs and bake cakes when I was a kid, I had no idea I would become a Slackware user.
Vobis had cases with Colani Design around as well - these are the ugliest looking cases that I have ever seen.Absolutely hilarious design, especially those with the round corners, they did not sell a lot of them back in the day and I can imagine, why. Yes, you see that he designed fast cars before. :) Sure, they are quite expensive nowadays, as Colani meanwhile has become a kind of "cult" as he passed away years ago and he sure was a big icon in China... "Achtung, Gefahrenzone" on the PSU and the "Vobis Quality Control"-Checkmark-Sticker (they must have missed out that sketchy connector-tinker-job) - that knocks me off :)
hehe ... I have been looking for a Colani for ages but have never been able to find one. I absolutely love them because I was lusting over them when we were going to buy our first PC back home. Was browsing through magazines a lot back then looking at advertisements. But we ended up with a normal "beige" box :).
16:05 just laughing at the Socket 7 made by 'Chupond', presumably a clononym for Dupont
Personally, I think the IBM PS/1’s and White 300 series and Aptiva’s are very nice computers. The Bios on these old computers are advanced for their time with support for lots of ram and large capacity hard drives. And sleep and hibernation support. Energy saving features. Also these white cases look ver simple and clean and nice with the front bay door closed. They look so nice and simple and attractive. Very clean. Those are my favorite Retro computers.
X2 the Aptiva, I always dreamt of one, the tower with sliding cover and those large speakers set.
I had a bunch of those (still got some). From 16 MHz 286 to 33 MHz 386... recently I was given a Highscreen Kompakt Serie II (2 not 3) - they're almost identical, there's minor differences. The III looks a lot better though.
All the Highscreens I found came with the same model 3,5 inch disk drive (Mitsumi) and almost all of them came with a Mitsumi 5,25 inch disk drive. Usually there's a drive bay right next to the power supply.
They usually came with Oak Technology 512k SVGA cards, methinks the Cirrus Logic card was an early upgrade.
my dads pc came with Trident 512KB videocard and 4MB base memory. Thougjt it would had some kind of 80MB of hard drive.. No soundcard or network card. Motherboard was a smaller one with 6 expension slots. Could remove the cpu in this one (was a budget based motherboard)
The CD Drive is beautiful. Oh i want one of these. :)
I like the tray that comes out to hold your coffee.
@@heedmywarning2792 Coffee? That makes so much sense now! I always put my ash tray in there!
That case is actually really beautiful 😍 ❤
I looked a long time for this desktop case and a good price. But in the nd i´ve buyed a Highscreen Tower with Ecokey, he looks awesome too.
Hey this is the one! The computer my buddy at school had in 1993 and I lusted after ever since! So cool you are reviewing one!
It will probably return to the channel at some time.
My "learning basic MS-DOS stuff" PC is a very similar Highscreen Kompakt Serie II. Had to fix quite some stuff, but now it is up and running :D
EDIT: Yes it has a bracket that goes beside the PSU. Have it removed from mine though as I'm running a XT-CF.
Yesss, it is and it's really hard to get one nowadays for under 25,- € even without PSU. 😥 I miss it, it was my first own computer back then as 286, upgraded later to a 486 DX/4 100.
My first computer, purchased new in 1989, was a "bargain basement" custom-built PC with an ELT-200 motherboard, a 386DX/20MHz CPU, 90MB SCSI hard drive (upgraded a few years later to a 200MB IDE hard drive when the original drive failed), 4MB RAM, and a case very much like yours. my 3.5" bay was empty and covered the whole time I had it; I had a 1.44MB 3.5" diskette drive in the upper 5.25" bay and a 360kB diskette drive in the lower 5.25" bay. My computer lacked the LED panel on the left; instead, it had just a power button, reset button and status LEDs set into the case. I don't remember it even having one of those funky turbo buttons. It was probably the worst computer I ever owned, but it served me well enough for 7 years.
It seems that VOBIS was a bit over the Europe. In Portugal, around late 90's and early 2000's, they were here selling their PCs and apparently they faded away as I didn't heard of them from 2004 or so. I have PC magazines where they advertised their ad.
The dutch Vobis website is still online :)
nah the IBM 5170 will always be the best desktop case design ever!
That might be true :)
I had a Tandon Targa and at the time I really liked their case.
Looks really cool. Never seen one of those.
Good 👍👍👍👍😍
Holy cow! That's look like my "amateurish" first computer build back in the days, the way it looks how it was assembled (seems like the owner attempted a retrofit into that case, and tried to save as much money from parts upgrade).
It was indeed a pretty bizarre build. Think it is in good hands now to be restored in its original state again.
@@RetroSpector78 Surely it will :). You know, everytime you bring up an Highscreen case to the channel, it is a bittersweet moment everytime. Because I remember me learning to tinker around PCs and mangling badly that 386 Highscreen desktop designed by Colani. If only I knew about preserving old tech 25 years ago :(.
I had almost forgotten, but plastic keyhole slot mainboard standoffs were the way they did them in the AT clone days. My first few x86 computers were like that. I still have a Baby AT 486 board with ISA and PCI. I think it has 32MB of RAM. I have PC-DOS 7 and Windows ME with 98Lite on it, DooM, and some other EGA/VGA games. It is fun to play with sometimes, and remember those days when that machine was the state of the art.
Yes but the plastic standoffs alone aren't enough ... they don't really hold it in place sufficiently .
Vote up, keep it up, thank you for sharing it :)
I had the 386 DX 40 version of this PC. The same case. With mine, however, I was able to install a 3.5 inch hard disk drive next to the power supply unit. But if this case is very tight, it is difficult to get to the connections of the mainboard. Unfortunately, my case broke over the years, most recently the plastic front broke apart. The plastic material became very brittle and cracked. In the end, I could only dispose of it and convert the technology into a different housing. But a Pentium doesn't fit this case, no. Many greetings, Chris
I have the outer case. What exactly is broken? The part with the buttons or the plastic on the case?
The hard drive came from the factory in a 5.25 Inch to 3.5 inch drive caddle which could be removed.. They have replace it with the cd-rom player. The 5.25. inch and 3.5 inch drives seems to be stock.
I know, because back in the day, my dad had a like same type of case.. It was also a compact with a 386 DX 33 inside with 4MB of memory and a Trident 512 MB videocard.
I spent a lot of time in Vobis stores in my youth, getting new stuff for my 486 at that time. My friends and I loved to read the flyers with the newest PCs and dream about one day getting that sick Pentium 75. 😁
You know what is even prettier? The old Colani cases from Highscreen, like my old 486 DX2-66 tower which we retrofitted with a CD-ROM and a Soundblaster (and where my father had to RMA it the first day we had it because he broke the frame of the exchangeable harddrive).
I had this exact case. Wouldn't say it's the most beautiful one in the world though.
Great video, there's just something about these retro cases that I love. Your title has that extra empty space before the question mark that should never ever be there, though. Makes it seem like you forgot a word that was supposed to go there. 🤔
Had a Highscreen/Vobis computer circa 1995. Pentium 75mhz. Fairly certain it also said "Colani" on the case in signature style.
I originally thought this would be clickbaiting, but then I saw that case ;I... I actually have it twice. It was the first machine we had (AM386 DX 25), the original one was thrown away, but due to me contacts and earlier building machines from scratch, I got two of these again - bc I like them.
The hard disk goes to the right of the PSU, and the holder is missing. You still see those two mounting holes for it. However, it would also be period-correct to have it with a 5 1/4 HDD bay - we had it with this, and one of mine also still has one.
The Pentium is surely not period-correct, these were sold with slower 486 max, but also 386(sx) and possibly 286 (not sure). Mine have faster 486, and that's enough :)
The odd colors on the Windows start bottom might be a bad RAMDAC, which is integrated to this specific chip. I also have a speedstar 24, but Tseng based, funnily with the same problem. It can't handle certain shades of colors. The RAMDAC there can be exchaged, but I haven't found a good fir yet that also covers SVGA (might be doing a video on this at some point).
Title of this clip is just so untrue. :) Even Vobis knew that and had Colani version of that case back then. Nice PC.
This definitely counts as a sleeper pc, at least it did around 1997 or so.
My pic would be the G5 Mac Pro. The attention to detail, build quality, and function of the panel release is incredible.
As exactely this was my first computer, it is the most beautiful :) just got one a few months ago, it‘s a pity the board is dead…
Lucky it is all standard AT. You can put anything you want in there.
I have the same case. Found it on the pavement. Took it home. Still waits to be cleaned.
Lucky man ! Never find anything on the pavements around here :)
Wow, we also owned this PC. Always had a lot of bios issues
We had a Highscreen from a Vobis shop in Breda once when I still lived at home with my parents. With the suspect turbo button. From 40 to 80. Never knew if it did anything.
I had this exact same PC as a kid, the original 386sx-16 version that is. The 3 1/2“ 52 MB hard drive was installed in a removable 5 1/4“ bracket above the 5 1/4“ floppy drive.
They probably did need the joystick port. And that card was the cheapest option, but they used its serial and parallel ports to prevent conflicts with the onboard?
Indeed. Still a weird configuration. Not how I would have done it :)
Thanks for the flashbacks....
I remember when those were everywhere. My brother had a 286 in that case. Some of my friends had the newer cases designed by colani aswell.
Nice job.
@17:37 I think that card is a left over from the original 386 system. I doubt that original 386 came with a soundcard by default (those were quite expensive upgrades back in the day), so it wasn't uncommon to have cards with gameports on them.
My parents's didn't have a soundcard.
Wow, I had exactly this one with a 286-16. Thx for that flashback
No this title goes to the Highscreen Colani series in my eyes :)
Happy new year to you and viewers. Wish you lot of videos like this. Nice front panel. Where did you put hdd with the closed case (at the very end) ?
At the first install, hdd seems to be near the 3.5 inches floppy.
Happy new year to you to ! All the best for 2022. I didn't mount it. New owner will install a CF card.
Most beautiful desktop in the world? Hardly. Standard beige box. But then again beauty is in the eye of the beholder....
Indeed. Have a thing for these highscreen PCs. A lot of love and hate for the Colani designs as well. Some love em , some hate em.
No. No, it's not... It's cute, but far from the most beautiful. I'd lean toward mid 1980's Compaq designs. But as in all things, beauty is in the eye of the beholder! That Speedstar ISA VGA is a pretty nice piece of upgradeware. I suspect it was a secondary upgrade to the 386, replacing something like a Tseng ET4000 OEM card circa 1994 before the machine got upgraded again to the Pentium.
I have a strong urge to possess it
I've also had weird effects of the bootscreen of win95/98 due to the gfx card. It would also effect some games with really odd effects/artefacts. Most notibly in Desperados.
Was a first for me ... But then again haven't installed that many windows 98 systems with an ISA videocard :)
@@RetroSpector78 it occurred to me on a PCI cirrus logic card I believe. Or possibly an oak.
That Creative CD-Rom behaved perfectly normal... I bet HDD and CD-ROM were on the same IDE cable, configured as master and slave.
With the HDD ( master ) missing The poor CD-ROM ( slave ) could not be accessed :)
No, its not the problem. In fact I was using CD-ROM drive configured as slave and it worked always fine (Removable HDD in bay was installed as master). But this early Matsushita CDROM have some problem with oakcdrom driver. Its even more funny if you have bootable Win98 CD. Bios can boot from CD (it is standard ATAPI CDROM), but Win98 boot just emulates booting from floppy and starts to load CDROM driver, which fails. So after that, you see virtual A drive (from CD), but you dont see CD content. There were Matsushita driver for this CD drive and drive worked normally with Windows ATAPI driver - either Win98 or NT/2k.
Also suspected a driver issue but had no time to further investigate. Had put too much hope on the win98 floppy. Thought that that one would have worked.
Had the same case but 486 Model, it came with a 486DX50, SB16 and a Tseng ET4000AX. HDD was something about 1GB mounted on a bracket opposite to the FDD where you see the two holes on the backside.
Computer stupendo! Gran bel video e complimenti per il tuo canale!
Socket-7 machines is my dream for ever...
Now i have i7 CPU but pentiums - grandpapas of new chips is still powerfull for me... I wanted Pentium in childhood but long time we have only 486DX4-100... And Quake with low FPS and sound off.......
That computer most certainly is an upgrade. My parents's pc had a harddrive where the 5.25" drive is in yours. That should be at the top.
That sound card belongs in a Compaq system. Matches the shade of gray they used on their I/O shields.
The ES1869 doesn't have an OPL chip, but I've heard that the OPL emulation in the ESS AudioDrive is a lot better than that of Sound Blaster cards at the time. I've got a Pentium MMX motherboard with one built in but I've already got an AWE 64 sound card for it, but maybe I'll give the AudioDrive a try one day.
The audio drives are a great alternative. Not as good as an awe by any stretch but certainly fine if you dont have a sound blaster or GUS. DOS operation is quite good on them.
My parents had exactly the same!
this is the computer of my dreams in 1997, but then I was able to afford AMD K5 133, and I will not say that I'm sorry, because then any computer for me was lucky
The Vobis Sky Tower was cool as well - way ahead of its time with the "no screwdriver approach", it could be opened and closed without a screwdriver, the expansion cards could be installed without screws and (i think) even the drive bays had some screwless mechanism. I even liked their Colani tower/desktop cases, though most people (at least here in Germany) thought they looked like absolute shit :D
The case is nice, but whoever did the upgrade back in the day kind of bodged it. The first thing I noticed when looking at the ports in the back was that they where not horizontal, but slightly at an angle. Seeing there are no screws and stand-offs it made sense to me. That Spliced power wiring though.... 🥶Yikes.
That sound card has ESFM, not OPL. Some like it, some don't. Not bad in my opinion, yet it's not original OPL and it does sound quite different.
Ooh, that one does look nice. Replacing the yellowed floppy fronts would make it look good as new!
BTW, I sent you a DM through Twitter end of last year about some hardware... you probably missed it ;)
Can't seem to find that one. Can you send me an email ? (About section of the channel)
@@RetroSpector78 will do!
Had one of these, it was a 286.
The ESS Audiodrive does not actually have the OPL chip, it has its own FM implementation called ESFM. It's also one of the better implementations of FM synth, while not the same as OPL, it's not inferior to it. ESS cards also don't have the bugs that plague a lot of SB16 cards, so I think you made a great choice.
It seems you could use a screwdriver magnetizer tool ;-)
The more I use my iFixit bits the more they should become more magnetised :)
You can't ask if this is the most beautiful case while having an Olivetti in the background
So you've had this computer for at least two years before doing a quick video on it and then reselling it? 😆 I guess it's like a nice wine - it has to ripen 😉
Unfortunately I have got too much stuff to properly cover. And the problem is I rarely sell stuff ... lots of trades. Another problem is time unfortunately. Busy day-job / family / all that ....
@@RetroSpector78 No worries, I just think it’s funny 😉
Having black drives would go nicely with the badge, would set it apart from the average clone cases and resolve the yellowing issue.
I did my degree on an Ambra Sprinta 25 Meg, 386sx. i maxed it out with expansion abilities. 16 Meg ram, 80387 math coprocessor, 270 Meg on two hard drives, mouse and keyboard , Windows 3.1, DOS 6.2.2, HP 500 C Inkjet., Qwemm memory manager, PCTools. Mine didn't have a ability to interface with a CD drive.
Try to enable pallet snoop
Curiosly is this a computer with DR-DOS preinstalled??
Windows 311 486; there be a IO card DOS - Win 3.11. Nice compact system, nostalgia restore, old, I like the idea, rather assemble it from scratch, downgrading a reasonable system for me a little waiste of history, yet as it´s isnt what it supposed to be ? Harddrive squeezed on a bracket along, allways wondere those 514 and 35 inch drives seperated 90 dgr apart from each other or that 514 is on the cdrom drive cable ? Soundcard inmcompatible with 3.11 l386 little use ?
That could run age of empires 1 😄
Can run a lot of things at 166MHz. But will also be nice to see it back in its original state (386 at 25MHz)
I would install S3 trio64v2 + voodoo2 with AWE64 + 32mb add on.
I am happy that we dont need to deal with win 98 and 95 nowdays, when I see videos like this I remember, everything can go wrong and it does. Oh yeah :)
What PSI are you running thru the turbo? 😂
nice machine!
I was given one similar years ago but it had 2 3inch flopy discs and no hard driver and it unfortunately stunk of rat piss when I booted it up and the flopis smoked and that was the end of it. Its kinda stupid they made a computer with no hard drive in the 90s lol but I gues it was made for those on a budget.
Do you have any 386SX motherboards you are willing to sell to someone in canada? What I am looking for is something with clock jumpers that allows the changing of the clock speed.
Shipping costs would be really terrible :) Difficult to find in your parts ? Also here not very commonhere . Don't have any to spare I'm afraid.
@@RetroSpector78 Ahh ok.. Thanks for responding! I have not come across one withing a reasonable price for a awhile. Ebay is really crazy. I don't care to pay basically 100 euro for a motherboard worth a 1/3 of that.
shouldn't get rid of it, should use it for retro dos or 3.1 games
Ironically, I don't think ripping out the original motherboard and tossing in a 486 is really "upgrading it". It would really be a lot more valuable if it were original... obviously the new owner agrees too!
The most beautifull desktop, is the Amiga 3000. Or SGI indy. Power Mac 6100 is also close to being the most beautifull.
Interesting, no Sound Card, despite being upgraded well into the latter half of the nineties; I don't think this machine was ever used for gaming.
Wasn't it necessary to load MSCDEX under Dos?
Device driver needs to be loaded via config.sys before you can run MSCDEX. But perhaps it was something as stupid as the slave jumper setting. Not sure. Ran out of time.
IMO this case is overrated. I accept it's emotional value, but that's it. Handling is kind of a nightmare with the PSU directly above the motherboard and almost no place for cabel management makes it hard to find a mainboards that fits well in it. Anyway, it's cool because it's different than the generic desktops and mini towers of that era.
Typo.. word = world?
Thx. Fixed.
@@RetroSpector78 welcome 🙂
I wouldn’t say it’s particularly good looking, compared to something like say, an Amiga 3000.
1st view
re-verse the failed development cycle back to the old style, new tech
re-write dev
re-ink, re-paint, re-illustrate, etc
no matter who thinks they have any say in what it should be, powers of air
who needs money anyways
or laws, you scaremongers