Is anyone able to identify this case (or machine?) on wheels?

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blakewantsa68@reddit

At first blush, from this side it looks like it is a Sun 3/200 series desk side server from the mid 80s. That looks like the monitor used to ship with as well.

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bonfuto@reddit

That's what I thought at first, but they didn't use PC backplanes or power supplies, did they?

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blakewantsa68@reddit

The ports were different, but they were on the back. You have to pop the front panel off and see if there’s a VME chassis from the back though… That looks just like a 3/280 desk side.

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WebIntrepid3639@reddit

i have one of these pcs in thre ipn (cecyt 13)

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DazzlingClassic185@reddit

The plugboard looks like Schuko so it could be in Germany? Aside from that could it be a NeXT? Weren’t they cubes?

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DazzlingClassic185@reddit

Ta, don’t think I ever saw one, just knew that little titbit!

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Efficient_Dog59@reddit

I have my feet sitting on a next cube under my desk right now!

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DazzlingClassic185@reddit

Nice! They were 68k based weren’t they?

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Efficient_Dog59@reddit

They were. I even have the original 68030 motherboard around here somewhere. 68040 is what is in there now. I also learned binary on an Atari 68k series machine. Good old days.

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DazzlingClassic185@reddit

Yeah… Ive got an Amiga under my monitor shelf with an ‘030. I guess I’m a bit older - I learnt assembly on a Spectrum!😂

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NarcissisticSupply69@reddit

It's a Chenbro A9891 server case from the late 90's. I have the exact same case in black.

https://www.pcstats.com/articles/183/index.html

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Blackholeofcalcutta@reddit

Looks like an HP NetServer if I squint hard enough. Worked with a few of them with a similar form factor that sat on casters.

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Successful-Mix-7780@reddit

NetServers had hot swap PSUs as far as I remember. I managed quite a few Ls.

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Blackholeofcalcutta@reddit

Yeah, you’re right. Might be an older Dell. Then again, I also see the front bezel may be a dark gray. The mystery continues …

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Yeah. I would love to have one of those server cases to build a PC in. I actually rescued one that someone had disposed of, but I never was able to do much with it besides use it as a shelf before... a thing happened, and I ended up losing most of my worldly possessions.

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holysirsalad@reddit

My guess is that this is a homebrew setup.

The case material is CHUNKY. Look at the depth of the edges between the rear face and the gray sheet metal.
Nothing is flush-mounted. That sort of depth isn’t uncommon around expansion slots but notice how the power supplies and 120mm fan are inset the same amount as the card cage.
There is no visible mounting hardware for the 120mm fan. I have never seen a commercially produced server where the exhaust fan wasn’t obviously fastened in some way. No screw heads, no rivets, no little plastic nubs, nothing to suggest there might be rails for tool-less replacement.
The power supplies make no sense. The upper unit is AT-style with a (probably) switched outlet for a monitor. The bottom looks like many early ATX PSUs. Enermax was shipping gold-coloured grilles at the time. These power supplies are not redundant and do not provide electricity to the same things inside this case.
The amount of bezel where the power bar is affixed, seemingly without visible fasteners, is apparently the perfect size for that power bar.
What sort of server has a fancy monitor on it, being wheeled across a parking lot, where a bunch of other people are hanging out and just so happen to have towers and monitors on the ground?

I can only conclude that this is someone’s purpose-built LAN party rig. It’s a bunch of parts installed in a what looks like a well-made plywood box. The ATX PSU would run the motherboard and related parts, and the AT PSU would run a ton of drives (HDDs, probably has a sweet RAID array to be first into maps in Unreal Tournament).

This leaves me wondering if there was a little drawer of cubby up front for peripherals and how much Bawls was consumed that day

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DeepDayze@reddit

A Sun Enterprise server?

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tpimh@reddit

It does look like Sun, but these PSUs look very generic. I can't remember Sun using anything like this.

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r_sarvas@reddit

I does look like there parts of the front that might have the Sun "purple" color, but the rest of the case doesn't seem to fit the Enterprise or Fire case color scheme.

OEM knock-off case?

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rmhollid@reddit

Lian li maybe

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achbob84@reddit

Looks like a generic ATX case with dual power supplies. Could be anything.

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Environmental_Top411@reddit

It's a COW.

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pimpbot666@reddit

Is it one of those quiet cases, like the kind they used in recording studios?

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lweinmunson@reddit

It reminds me of the first gen Dell PowerEdge servers. I think they had the beige bezel at the front though. That general form factor was real common in the mid 90's for PC servers to the various Unix boxen. All I can really say is that it's not flashy enough to be an SGI.

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weird_oscillator@reddit

I miss those old Dell PowerEdge 4100/200 servers from the mid 90's. I wish they'd bring back those double-wide form factors.

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DeepDayze@reddit

Compaq made some nice doublewides that are rackmountable.

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lweinmunson@reddit

We were a Compaq shop when we got our first few to evaluate. It was shocking to kind of gently toss an 8x10 sheet of paper near it and watch it get sucked onto the front bezel. Those things were so loud at startup and didn't get much quieter when they were fully booted.

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