226 points by doubletwoyou9 days ago | 55 comments
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Back then this was quite a bit of effort and engineering (especially the bootloader auto detection) to achieve and probably got a lot of wowed faces. Today nobody would bat an eye, you can cram anywhere a tiny PC or even stick PC, and maybe have a single USB-C cable sticking out.
Back then, a computer case like that often came pre-equipped with a PSU. To save a little money around the turn of the milennium I'd buy the cheapest case they had (IIRC CoolerMaster was very affordable) and just use the PSU it shipped with.
So it really does look exactly like a spare case and no actual computer present.
Those VIA EPIA builds were the peak of that scene. Fanless C3, 2003, everyone stuffing boards into toasters, ammo cans, and PSUs. Slow as hell, but nothing since has been as fun to hack on. Pi cases just aren't the same.
I remember being very impressed by the combined daftness and ingenuity in this and similar builds, to the point that I'm disappointed by the 3D printing community for its lack of imagination in computer cases: there are a great many options for mini-ITX boards, RPi's and their ilk, but for the most part that are just cases, or mini-racks, or open test rigs, with little or none of the imagination that brought us things like this and the infamous PHKL (https://web.archive.org/web/20011212120420/http://www.exonom...).
Wow I remember this being covered in Custom PC, a magazine in the UK.
I emailed the author to get the modified bootloader source code that he mentions at the end to allow the dual boot between XP and red-hat via a hardware switch. It was magic to me at the time as a 13 year old! I probably still have the code somewhere.
There was something special about Mini-ITX machines at the time, nothing was that small.
I miss the scene and custom cases. MN PCTech still exists and I love reading their builds. It was more of an art to craft custom cases but the payoff was showing up to a lan party with a custom case no one else has.
Also, it was the last serious push of VIA as a processor vendor.
I genuinely miss that era of computing. Simpler, more fun, and with way more but not as crippling problems (except Linux support and WinModem. I'm glad that we're past that).
That era was great - think PC Engines, Soekris, early Mikrotik RouterBoard, etc. Felt proper elite at the time.
I still have one of those C3 embedded aluminium boxes with a pass-through Ethernet bypass port pair. I ran it as a transparent bridging FW, when power went, it turned into a coupler. This is what got me using pfSense.
Another thing VIA C3 had was the integrated Padlock crypto engine, and this was way before AES-NI, supported on both Linux and BSDs. I remember benchmarking SSL against contemporary Xeons at the time and it wasn't even apples and oranges, it was more like tar and fibre optics. Cisco's AIM module throughput at the time felt laughable in comparison.
Atom was OK, but today Intel's N-series are proving great and we are completely spoilt for choice in terms of good, cheap platforms available.
PC/104 SBCs were smaller (X-Y dimensions, not so much Z as they stacked expansion cards) with similar CPUs. We built some really tiny customs using them back in those days. They were, however, pretty expensive, being targeted at the embedded/industrial market.
Nitpick, but IIRC this was 2003, so the Red Hat in that dual boot would've been Red Hat Linux 9, before the Fedora split. Not RHEL yet. I could be wrong on the month. Either way, a Linux column in a PC mod mag's first year is a great gig.
Sounds like a fun project and very cool for the nostalgic people (like me).
A bit off topic, but I also loved the fact that the website remains like an antique website from that era (I know the article is from 2003 but the design is clearly not "modern"). I am going to say something probably stupid, but I feel there is a correlation between old/vintage design = good content.
Part of it's survivorship bias. Nobody keeps a 2003 page online for twenty years unless they cared about it. The junk from that era got deleted or sank into link rot. Plus hand-written HTML loads instantly, which still feels strange now.
Yes, especially the concern they could accidentally boot XP from their Linux box, and vice versa - I laughed. But also the technical solution, placing it one way up and then another with a tilt sensor, is really advanced.
That part was brillant. I must admit I almost didn't click on the link as small builds have been done for ages until I realized that since you can now buy stuff that is much smaller out of the box something must have been very special on that build for that article to be posted here so many years later
Just last night I won an auction for a dual Pentium III supermicro setup with 1GB of memory. To relive this era of computing, including simulating my high school network by deploying Netware in a lab.
benheck built a luggable computer into an MGD beer case around the early 00s as well. The build log and pictures seem to be lost to time but I recall it having a flip-open disc door that was cut out of the side of it. I didn't appreciate the humor as a kid but having had a beer or two in my day it's a lot funnier in retrospect.
I was a kid around that era and also thought his builds were very tacky and overrated. You changed your mind over "a beer or two"?
I'm so glad we stopped turning every hobby into an offshoot of modded car culture. I can't unhear the tokyo drift theme every time I'm reminded of this era.
I got my first real Pentium
Bought it at the local shop
Played Quake till my fingers ached
Was the summer of '99
Me and some guys from school
Had a LAN and we played real hard
Jonny lost, the network failed
Should've upgraded our thinnet
Oh, when I look back now
Ninety-eight was more fun than XP
And if I had the choice
My kids wouldn't be stuck with chromebooks
I really miss my old PC
Loved my Combat Flight Simulator 2 box with like a 150 pages book with presentation, history and pictures of all planes
Crimson Skies with comics inside etc
Construction stands out - this is made from a bunch of (thick) cut plastic sheets glued together. But within just over 10 years, almost nobody attempting this would do anything other than 3D print the whole case in one shot.
Great Idea. I wish the times with custom build PCs will come back. Now all Computers look basically the same from the outside which is sad. Always entertaining to look at Retro-Builds.
MicroATX has almost certainly always been more popular than MiniITX.
MicroATX motherboards are usually cheaper than ATX or MiniITX and you can typically use normal PSUs and optical drives instead small ones that are more expensive and have fewer options.
You can always put a mini ITX board in a full size ATX case if you want though...
I have on my bookshelf an unopened and still shrink-wrapped copy of Spaceward Ho! (Win 95 version IV requiring at least a 486/33). I like its bold red colour and the exciting way the unseen floppy disk and manual rattle about inside when I turn the box!
Site exists because VIA pushed Mini-ITX with its EPIA boards, as far as I know. Fanless C3 chip meant you could cram a board into almost anything. Case modders found a form factor small enough to fit inside a joke.
