question about those big old pc cases

[Gabriel Knight]

I was wondering why they made those very tall computer cases back in the
late 80's or early 90's the ones that had room for about 8 or more hdd's
other than that why were they so tall? I remember they had lots of room left
when everything was installed, my parents one I think had only two fans -
one for the cpu and another as a case fan and the air flow in it was so much
it didnt make sence to make it so big and tall. On the front of the case it
could have a couple of CD/DVD roms (DVD - did they have them back then?), a
tape drive, a floppy drive, a zip drive and even room for more things - is
this why they were so tall??

GK

 

[Flasherly]

I was wondering why they made those very tall computer cases back in the
late 80's or early 90's the ones that had room for about 8 or more hdd's
other than that why were they so tall? I remember they had lots of room left
when everything was installed, my parents one I think had only two fans -
one for the cpu and another as a case fan and the air flow in it was so much
it didnt make sence to make it so big and tall. On the front of the case it
could have a couple of CD/DVD roms (DVD - did they have them back then?), a
tape drive, a floppy drive, a zip drive and even room for more things - is
this why they were so tall??

GK

They're still basically as big -- world of difference in overall
cooling design now is all. More plastic and less angular now.
They're "friendlier" to getting scratched and cut -- usually free
goodies on a better front interface, USB and speaker connects, etc.,
air filter grills, extra fans thrown in and really hefty ones with
speed control switches. Maybe not as forgiving for pushing the drive
mountings and then cabling, tend to be much dirtier with the airflow.
But better than the trouble over the long run for tiny cases, so I
stick on the big side. Cheapo $30-50US on sales can yield some
surprisingly good values. Oh, hell yes. If they want it to be lit to
look like a Xmas tree for a gamer style -- that's the competitive
nature of the market game. So long as it's big-butted, I'm happily
playing.

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

I was wondering why they made those very tall computer cases back in the
late 80's or early 90's the ones that had room for about 8 or more hdd's
other than that why were they so tall? I remember they had lots of room left
when everything was installed, my parents one I think had only two fans -
one for the cpu and another as a case fan and the air flow in it was so much
it didnt make sence to make it so big and tall. On the front of the case it
could have a couple of CD/DVD roms (DVD - did they have them back then?), a
tape drive, a floppy drive, a zip drive and even room for more things - is
this why they were so tall??

GK

When the early tower computer cases started being used the old hard
drives were big bulky things that took up two of the 5.25 inch drive
bays each.

Then to aid in cooling most people left a slot empty between drives, if
you could afford more than one, for added cooling.

Add in a couple of floppy drives and possibly a tape drive and you used
up most of the available slots.

 

[Michael Black]

When the early tower computer cases started being used the old hard drives
were big bulky things that took up two of the 5.25 inch drive bays each.

The drives also had far lesser capacity. Yes, pretty much everything
scales down, you wouldn't need as much hard drive capacity since the files
weren't as big, but if you needed high capacity the only way was to get
multiple drives. Maybe not needed for the average person, but for a
server, it might be quite important.

This Dell from about 2001 still has space for three hard drives, even with
a floppy and a DVDRW drive and a CDRW drive.

Michael

 

[GMAN]

I was wondering why they made those very tall computer cases back in the
late 80's or early 90's the ones that had room for about 8 or more hdd's
other than that why were they so tall? I remember they had lots of room left
when everything was installed, my parents one I think had only two fans -
one for the cpu and another as a case fan and the air flow in it was so much
it didnt make sence to make it so big and tall. On the front of the case it
could have a couple of CD/DVD roms (DVD - did they have them back then?), a
tape drive, a floppy drive, a zip drive and even room for more things - is
this why they were so tall??

GK

The tall ones were usually server cases.

Plus befor you have large 2TB hard drives, you had to have 3 or 4 hard drives
to get any decent amount of space.

 

[Nil]

The early cases had to have room for the gasoline engine.

Mine ran on steam.

 

[Mint]

On Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:24:37 -0500, Grinder wrote:

[snip]

The early cases had to have room for the gasoline engine.

This was needed to run the fan to keep all the tubes cool.

Some models used the exhaust heat from the tubes to keep your coffee
cup warm.

Have a great day,
Andy

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