Help identifying old tower PC "Sunshine"

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vinciblechunk@reddit

Lots of mom and pop computer shops in this era printed their own logos on those square stickers and stuck them on generic AT cases which had an empty square specifically for such logos

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FuManBoobs@reddit

Now let's see Paul Allen's AT case logo.

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ThisUserAgain@reddit

Yes, but not in this case, it is a real brand with a real trademark:
https://tm.twincn.com/Lm.aspx?q=%e6%97%a5%e6%8f%9a%e5%af%a6%e6%a5%ad%e6%9c%89%e9%99%90%e5%85%ac%e5%8f%b8&sel=1

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

Hey! You found it. Nice! This was exactly what I wanted to know. Thanks so much.

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

Good to know! Maybe they were a local or regional shop. I'm in Maine, USA.

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LinksPB@reddit

It's not even necessary for it to have been assembled by a shop. People have been building their own PCs from individually bought parts since the '80s.

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

Right but presumably the "Sunshine" brand belonged to some organization, even if they just made computer cases.

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I remember getting such a square sticker with a graphic card back in the 90s that the word on the sticker didn't have anything to do with the card's model, brand, or any of the promo stuff that came with it. It was just a cool sticker that didn't really relate to anything (I do wish I could remember what it said).

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AppropriateCap8891@reddit

Not the cases, the company or person assembling it.

That is a pretty generic case, probably from the early 1990s. In case you did not know, that "display" is something the assembler configured, and the fact it is only 2 digits screams that is from the 486 or early Pentium era. Otherwise it would be 3 digits.

And as an FYI, most of us absolutely hated those things. Some ships would configure them, some would even cheat when configuring them and assign a higher number than the speed of the computer.

I always simply assigned them to say "HI" and "LO". That way no matter what motherboard I put in the case, it was correct.

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Dannynerd41@reddit

that’s a xt it used the pin cable for keyboard

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MakerKevJ@reddit

I still do XD

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madatthe@reddit

Right! It’s not a major brand, it’s likely not even a “brand.” It could have been sold as a white label product at a store or out of a catalog that ordered a couple hundred of them at a time from a supplier and changed the name every season. Back in the day there was IBM (and eventually Dell) as the giants that either made (or contracted) custom boards and cases and there were countless other outfits building millions of towers that were indistinguishable from one another outside of the 1 square inch sticker that they placed on the case for their customer. It’s not unlike the factories nowadays that make disposable consumer electronics like dash cams and headphones that are then re-branded by Amazon resellers with names like XYGHULY and SMILETEK.

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thehappiestotaku@reddit

This is Compaq erasure and we shouldn't stand for it.

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madatthe@reddit

Agreed. How narrow minded of me!

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thehappiestotaku@reddit

Proliant authorized service tech wandered confusedly into the chat.

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

Ah! An excellent comparison. I can see how it would be difficult decades later to look up info on something like XYGHULY 🤣

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KSPhalaris@reddit

Exactly this. I worked for a little shop in Iowa, and we had our own stickers. Was a silhouette of a head with a yellow light bulb.

https://web.archive.org/web/19981111184428/http://www.clearlakecomputers.com/

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hyperdream@reddit

Along with white box shops, buying a case from Computer Shopper or one of those traveling "computer shows" you could also end up with generic case badges.

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AppropriateCap8891@reddit

The shops I worked for always had their own badges.

The one by one inch square for the badge had been a thing since the early 1980s. If you had a computer shop you just designed a logo you wanted to put there and any local print shop could make them for you. Or a plastics company if you wanted to go really fancy.

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1quirky1@reddit

This gives me flashbacks. I have assembled several hundred of these which gave me so many cuts on my hands.

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0xKaishakunin@reddit

printed their own logos on those square stickers

I still got a bunch with the McKusick BSD Daemon and the NetBSD logo. Some guy sponsored them in 2002 and we sold them for 5€ each at LinuxTage and Chaos Communication Congress.

Here are the ones we sold at Chaos Communication Camp 2003: https://imgur.com/a/tWg5OQ8

PS: When I saw that logo, my first impression was that someone mirrored the Lufthansa crane.

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gadget850@reddit

Beige box

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ThisUserAgain@reddit

Sunshine computers from Taiwan, they did build very low level clones. They had an office in California US and Rotterdam, Netherlands.

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

My hero!

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geko29@reddit

I had completely forgotten about the fake floppy drives!

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Leadarious@reddit

One of them is ... the other 2 look like the drive facias came away with the front of the case ... how that could have come about is concerning...

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

I took them off of the drives and glued them in place on the case cover.

At some point I lost the reset button though.

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bhiga@reddit

Never could find the right blanking plate for the right case, or the right color. This probably says I had too many machines over the years.

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Accomplished-Camp193@reddit

Generic front panel for a generic Baby AT case, there's nothing to identify.

Every case from this era had a small rectangular indentation for a logo, and logos came from the shops which assembled them.

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bhiga@reddit

Often a little round hole too - I put an extra LED in one, I think when I used one as a CD-R tower.

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Grumpflipot@reddit

What use would it be, if you only have the front? It's a generic mid tower AT case with a square spot to stick your OEM logo in front. I would replace it with "liunx inside" if it was mine.

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

It's decorative. I was just curious about the origin

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HerrFloppenstoffen@reddit

Fun fact: we had those Sunshine generic clones in The Netherlands as well. There was a shop in The Hague (Sunshine Computers) that actually used the same logo. So even those “brand” stuff was generic :)

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

😮 Oh man I'd love to see a photo if you can find one.

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HerrFloppenstoffen@reddit

I tried to find one via google, but I could only find some nostalgic messages on those historic computer shops like Weans and Sunshine. I’m pretty sure that I don’t have any pictures of my Sunshine machine: they cheated badly by selling a pentium 90 which actually was an overclocked pentium 75. Which somehow always overheated 😂

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ThisUserAgain@reddit

Shunshine was a Taiwan manufacturer of clones, a dutch businessman, selling those clones licensed that brand name and logo and opened a few stores with that name.

Translated from an old post:

Weans and Sunshine are actually the same thing. At some point, near the end, a branch and office were added on Pasadena in The Hague. This was the wholesale division. Companies like DES and King Computers, remember those, bought their stock there.

...

Oh yes, Weans indeed stands for We Are Not Stupid.

...

That Marc guy worked in our organization at a much later stage, at EURO P.C., which had locations on Segbroeklaan and two on Fahrenheitstraat. It is true that this was also a branch of Sunshine N.V.

Our holding company started selling computers in 1983 under the names EPC, JWC Computers, Necom, and RE-Paco, with five branches in The Hague and one in Rotterdam. A spectacular location was on Weimarstraat in The Hague, where a Saturday revenue of 1 million guilders was achieved. The end of that branch was caused by a violation involving BUMA, the Dutch organization that collects licensing fees for music and copyrighted works, similar to ASCAP or BMI in the United States. Firenze DOS was supplied with systems, even though it was only allowed to be delivered with Firenze systems.

...

The claim that Weans did not pay taxes is not correct. The company went under because of setting up a memory factory in the Netherlands, with the goal of importing only raw materials and avoiding the anti dumping levy, which was 60 percent at the time. We received an additional tax assessment of 150 million guilders for what the government saw as avoided import duties. In the end, I settled the fine for 32 million.

...

I still find Jan's stories above hilarious. Ninety percent is a lie. I worked there for almost three years, until the visit from the FIOD, the Dutch fiscal investigation service. It turned out that nothing had ever been paid to the GAK, the Dutch social security authority responsible at the time for employee insurance contributions, even though we thought it had been.

Jan was a brilliant businessman. He could scam anyone right in front of you. He ran many VAT carousel schemes and made a fortune. But almost everything he said was nonsense to help sell his products.

Still, I look back very fondly on the time I worked there.

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HerrFloppenstoffen@reddit

Wow- thanks for this story! Does solve the puzzle why they suddenly disappeared after rebranding- for me at least…

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

Thanks for trying!

And that's awful. 🤣

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Disastrous-Border-58@reddit

Funny how generic boxes with pc shop logo on them is now a completely foreign concept to many.

You used to see more pcs like this in people's homes bought and assembled at the local computer shop than brand ones. Gave you more value for money as well usually compared to brands.

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FuckIPLaw@reddit

I guess the idea that paying someone to do a custom build for you could be a way of saving money is the really foreign part. If OP had found a modern custom gaming PC they'd have known it was custom, but it likely wouldn't have had a shop logo on it because the only real reason to pay someone to do it for you is to get things like fully custom lighting and cooling loops designed and built, and that gets expensive fast.

Back in the day you couldn't easily just hop online and find good tutorials, parts comparisons, and the parts themselves, and local retailers had limited inventory on hand, and might have to special order anything more specific. At which point you may as well pay a little extra on your $1000+ investment (for the period equivalent of a basic email and Facebook machine!) to have them put the parts together for you once they came in. We used to have computer shows that were like gun shows but for computer parts because of all this. If you needed something specific and wanted to buy it on the spot instead of waiting for a special order to come in, that was your best bet.

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Kiyo-chan@reddit

We had a great free magazine called the byte buyer back in the day. It would have current articles, guides and stuff in it. If you knew what you were doing it was great, most of the computer shops in the area (San Diego) advertised in it so you could somewhat shop prices.

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Disastrous-Border-58@reddit

I agree for the most part with you, but regarding finding info on how to build before Google, we used to (at least in the Netherlands) have some pretty good magazines which did part comparison and show you how to install them. But you're right on getting the best of the best parts, you'd just hoped your local shop had the tnt2 ultra in stock, but often you'd have to make do with whatever.

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King_Corduroy@reddit

Man I love that badge!

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Dannynerd41@reddit

xt clone lots of them were made

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kd8qdz@reddit

Both floppy drives, but no CD. LCD mhz display. Im going to guess this was a 286 of some type.

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LoudSheepherder5391@reddit

Nah, i'd go with an early 486. This had an internal hdd, which was not common on 286, nor was a 5.25. Usually they had 2 8 inch disks, one for os, one for programs/storage.

It also appears this has a "speed" rating to indicate turbo, not just the light. Which would make it at least 386. Which is possible. But I'd put $ on an early 486. That's also when "towers" took over from the horizontal desktops of before.

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MWink64@reddit

Yes, this design screams 486 to me as well. However, I don't think an internal HD and 3.5" drive was that uncommon on a 286. I know mine is unusual but it doesn't even have a single 5.25" bay.

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LoudSheepherder5391@reddit

You could add 3.5 drives. You could add primitive hdd. But both came out after the machine, and neither were that common. And no drive on the 286 supported the hdd led on the case, as they were so "hacked" on.

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MWink64@reddit

You know there's more than one 286 PC design, right? My 286 came with a 3.5" floppy, a full-height 3.5" HD, and there is a HD LED on the case.

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kd8qdz@reddit

I rejected 386/486 because no cd-drive. I don't remember machines in that class being sold without a Ccrom. Turbo existed on the 286, and was arguably more relevant there.

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MWink64@reddit

It was very common for 386 and 486 systems not to come with a CD-ROM.

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LoudSheepherder5391@reddit

Turbo existed from the 286-the pentium.

But it only had a little led to indicate the turbo. No the speed rating. Cd rom were was post 386. They didn't come out until the 486, and dint really catch on till the pentium

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WoodyTheWorker@reddit

And Turbo switch

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CooperDK@reddit

The lower one is just a cover resembling a floppy drive.

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kd8qdz@reddit

Im aware. But the big one at the top is not a CD drive, its a 5 1/4" floppy drive.

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mojorific@reddit

These aren’t like consoles. There were literally thousands of independent shops making pc’s in the 80’s and 90’s. They all put their own decal and stickers on it. It’s basically paying for someone else to build you a computer.

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PipeQuirky2633@reddit

Photos from the inside of the computer would be helpful to identify its configuration and more, but outside visuals feels that is a generic oem collected with no brand.

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

As mentioned in the post, there is no longer an inside. All the hardware was sent to recycling long ago. I just kept the faceplate cause I thought it was neat. I was mostly interested in the brand name Sunshine. All the replies have been helpful in understanding how the sticker doesn't mean much.

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Materidan@reddit

There were tens of thousands of mom and pop shops who built systems. There was no “brand”.

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FlyByPC@reddit

Probably made in a back room of a mom-and-pop computer shop in a strip mall. There were thousands of different "brands."

Open it up and see what make and model the components are, and go from there.

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

Wish I'd kept pics from when I tore it apart all those years ago but it's just the case faceplate now, hardware is long gone. I might have some odds and ends from it still in my junk bin, but I'd have no way of telling. All the replies have been very helpful in understanding how diverse the "branding" was back then. Thank you!

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Sterquilinus-616@reddit

I would dry hump that machine for having a 5.25" drive. No fricken idea what I'd do with it, since it's not the old IBM type that can be forced to read/write commodore and other formats... but I'd need to show it love.

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timfountain4444@reddit

Generic Beige Box. There was a 1" square cut-out for vendors to put their logo.

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ellicottvilleny@reddit

I was one of the people who sold these beige cases. Our stickers came from a marketing company that had equipment to make the little badges. We ordered them in 200 at a time.

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timfountain4444@reddit

At the company I worked at, we had badges made for our machines with our company logo on. We weren't making PC's, but data acquisition cards and software and we would give them to customers... It was a way to market the company.

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ellicottvilleny@reddit

I remember wanting my own pc brand. Warp Speed computers. Then one day I saw someone had literally stolen my idea right through the aether, right down to it having the NCC 1701 Enterprise on the PC badge. I was robbed, I tell you.

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

I love beige. Thanks for the reply.

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Accomplished_Sir_660@reddit

that look like a case from Luski back in the day. I've built many of them myself.

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leitz68@reddit

Sunshine is the brand of the case !

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Tsu_na_mi@reddit

Back in the "old days", there was a magazine called "Computer Shopper". It was as thick as a phone book (\~1.5-2" thick), printed on news print, and was about 98% ads. There were HUNDREDS of computer vendors, who sold pre-built systems. Computer cases had a standard blank badge spot (\~1-1.25" square), and most of those companies made their own brand labels. This is probably one of those. I used a PlayStation logo I cut out from controller packaging on my first tower PC.

Gateway and Dell started out this way, distinguished themselves with bigger ads and custom cases, and eventually grew to be industry leaders. You still see pre-built vendors, just modern cases are more complicated and refined in design.

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

Maybe I should find an old copy and thumb through. Would be neat to find this one.

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Tsu_na_mi@reddit

Get an older one and realize how good we have it now regarding prices. "8MB RAM $499!" "System price $5999". And that was in 1990s money.

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ksuwildkat@reddit

I ran a "white box" computer store from 1996-1999 and sold tons of computers in similar cases. Most of mine were blank because I didnt want to spend the $2-$5 it cost to get custom labels. Some of the cases I bought had similar random names. Usually they were overstock or cases with custom labels for a company who went out of business. Those cost $1-$10 less than "clean" ones and I was trying to save every dime possible.

I closed up in 1999 when Dell started selling complete systems shipped to your door for less than I could buy parts at wholesale. Got to know when to fold.

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at-the-crook@reddit

Generic whitebox build. Very common in that era.

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justeUnMec@reddit

Back then there were small PC integrators in every neighbourhood who took standard parts, and a generic case and stuck their badge on it - cases were designed for that with a space for that little square plastic sticker. Likelihood is this was the local integrator whereever this camp was.

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gravitystix@reddit (OP)

I suppose I could! It didn't occur to me that there would have been local shops putting their label on. It's a bit like my car dealership slapping their logo on the car they sold me, even though they didn't make it.

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KingDaveRa@reddit

I'm wondering if Sunshine was the case manufacturer, and they just put a badge in the box with it. AOpen used to do that, and others still do. Back when I worked in a little shop, we used AOpen cases for quite a while and had a stack of AOpen case badges because we put our own on (wish I still had some of those :( )

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LoudSheepherder5391@reddit

Kind of. But they probably assembled it, as well.

Just like you, personally can go out and buy components to build a custom pc, so can a pc shop. And they did. It used to be common for companies to prefer working with local companies to keep it local, etc. So there used to be a bunch of these shops back in the day.

Even up to the early 2000s, I worked at an internet Cafe that built custom systems for local businesses as a side gig.

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Buy pallet of white label pc cases from a random page in a PC Shopper issue
Slapped their own logos badge on it
Profit!

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