Some More Retro PC Uniqueness - The Tyan S1564D Build

[ratdude747]

Re: Some More Retro PC Uniqueness

Took a look, it should fit

I'll take quick pics and head to my parents house in search of the HDD carrier. I know I've seen it down there.

[ratdude747]

Re: Some More Retro PC Uniqueness

I'll be sending the rig to topcat. A bit of a shame given that I put some effort into this one and IIRC it was one of the last AT boards ever made... but it was sitting and collecting dust (and rust, oddly enough). Maybe the guts would be good for the crap case he's moving out of?

It's missing the rear HDD carrier but being an enlight, Topcat says he has a few sitting. I took it out because my golden orb cooler interefered (yay slot 1). The rest I'll send topcat because all my other AT cases I threw out many years ago (I feel pretty dumb to be honest... that was cool stuff come to think of it!). I still have a couple 386/486 boards left (one or two use separate I/O cards, of which I have one or two buried) but otherwise I'm devoid of AT stuff.

Pics of the remains are attached... I'll let you play "find the missing parts" to see what IS missing. And no, it's not screws, although I did skimp on them due a lack of spare mounting hardware at the time of construction.

PS- thanks to Hondaman for the PSU... the case used to have a 386 in it with a really, really, REALLY crap "chicago"brand PSU. I wish I had pics, it was the worst I've ever seen. It even made this look good.

[TechGeek]

Re: Some More Retro PC Uniqueness

You.......... parted it out? ;(

[ratdude747]

Re: Some More Retro PC Uniqueness

You.......... parted it out? ;(

Who? Me? Which rig, the 386 or the PIII that's in the case now. The 386 was a junky SX, IIRC one of those infamous 0 cache PC chips boards. Junk. The PIII I am kinda sad to see removed but honestly it's not all that special. Unless you mean missing parts, which is just IDE and floppy cables. I needed them for something else and this was sitting without a use.

[Topcat]

Re: Some More Retro PC Uniqueness

This one is wrapping up...posted from it. Final round of pics are coming..... Running Win2k with 512mb RAM. Everything seems to play nice, but whoa is this thing slow!! ...but I guess I'm spoiled!

[Topcat]

Re: Some More Retro PC Uniqueness

...and the final round of pics...and a thanks to Ratdude for the old enlight AT case.

Case disassembled...


Uhh ohh....PSU needed to be decrapxon'd...


case was a tad filthy too. Everything was hotwashed, including the Tyan motherboard.


All Cleaned and after getting a good air compressor blow job, I still let it sit a few days.




Mounted on the tray:


One drawback of a small AT case....mess of ribbons and not a lot of room. It's hard to make things look nice, but this clusterf*ck isn't going to cut it!!


Better...and about as good as it was going to get.





All buttoned up:


Up & running.


Overall, not terrible....but boy, you sure appreciate what you have today when you get on something of this era....and back then I thought this was the absolute cats ass!!

[ratdude747]

Re: Some More Retro PC Uniqueness

...and the final round of pics...and a thanks to Ratdude for the old enlight AT case.

You're welcome. It was collecting dust (and spiders) in my parent's basement and I wasn't going to use it any time ever.

Case disassembled...

Kids, note that there was not a pre-disassembly pic. That's because in order to make it fit the box I had to ship it partially disassebled. That's the nice thing about old cases, many times you actually can do that.

Uhh ohh....PSU needed to be decrapxon'd...

Funny thing is that PSU has no more than 10 or so POH. It was NOS when Hondaman gave it to me years ago and I only used it for the short bit of messing around with what was inside the case.

case was a tad filthy too. Everything was hotwashed, including the Tyan motherboard.

Yeah the case was a bit rough when I got it and storage didn't help matters.

All Cleaned and after getting a good air compressor blow job, I still let it sit a few days.

Looks brand new

Mounted on the tray:

You gotta love those trays. Really handy, aren't they?

One drawback of a small AT case....mess of ribbons and not a lot of room. It's hard to make things look nice, but this clusterf*ck isn't going to cut it!!

Yeah, par for the course with those cases. I did warn you that it would be a bit cramped!

Better...and about as good as it was going to get.

I see you found a use for the PS/2 header adapter that I had in there... Now if you found a use for the USB header also originally in there (in one of the 25 pin holes), I'm calling bullshit .

All buttoned up:

I see you didn't have the bracket for the rear HDD after all... or you chose not to install one?

Up & running.


Overall, not terrible....but boy, you sure appreciate what you have today when you get on something of this era....and back then I thought this was the absolute cats ass!!

It WAS the cat's ass back then. Nice build, glad the case and PSU went to a good use.

[Topcat]

Re: Some More Retro PC Uniqueness

15k hdd is mounted in the 5.25 tray with fans, I didn't need the other hdd cage....and the way it fits in those cases, it'd have been more crammed up than it was. No warning was necessary, I used a lot of these old enlight cases back when the AT form factor was all there was. I can't even begin to tell you how many Pentium 166MHz system I built in those little cases....at the time, was the smallest full AT case of its time.

I wish modern ATX cases still employed the removable motherboard trays, that made life so much easier....but cheapass syndrome consumed case makers it seems.

No, the USB header was of no use. The PS2 header worked with this board, as it has a header for a PS2 mouse. It worked. It was a good stroll down memory lane.

[Topcat]

Re: Some More Retro PC Uniqueness

Here's to awakening a 7 year old thread.....but it's relevant!!

This came a few days ago amongst some other things. Case was pretty well stripped of internals. Motherboard and all drives gone. It *WAS* a P5-90; which is pretty self explanatory...a Pentium Classic @ 90Mhz. That optical is mine I was test fitting. For some reason, this Tyan board really stuck in my mind to be in this case. Such a nice fit both physical and period specific!





Problem numeral uno was the plastics on this case were badly yellowed....so lets take it apart and prepare some of the 'soup'....



It's been a while since I've had to make any of this....





Now for this garbage PSU that was the only thing still in the case...I don't think it's original to the case..... I can tell why they left it...it feels like a $4 power supply!!





It also looks like a $4 power supply!!





Back to taking the case apart....





All the parts....and that retarded 80mm fan blockoff plate.....which always boggled my mind why Gateway did that.... Making that blockoff plate probably cost them more than a cheap 80mm fan would have cost to place in the opening.....but anyway...



Washed & dried.



After about 6 hours in the soup....after that the magic in the soup is all gone....and it came out beautiful!!

Flash on:





Flash off:



Going back together. Front panel connectors and a new fan in the bracket. The old one wasn't spinning well....the case had a bunch of sand in it when I got it...so no telling.



Rear fan instead of the blockoff...



...and one of the more rare jewels of my collection...



Installed.



Drives. The HDD is a 1.6" height 9.1gb Cheetah. These sound so magnificent upon spinup!! Yes, I know the HDD holder isn't a very good match to the case color-wise, but cooling is required for these drives. Optical is an 8x20 scsi cdr. I don't remember brand.



One thing I just never liked about this era of hardware; cable management was always a pain.....but I did ok with this one.





It POST's!! I didn't even have any SCSI issues!!



...and with that, time to install NT4...



Time to put the cover back on....and of course a butt shot.



Always liked these cases...



...and done!! This was wrapped up, I was just tinkering with it when something else came in that made me take this one off the bench....but it is complete.





System specs didn't really change since the last time other than the HDD....but here they are again.

Tyan S1564D Dual SKT7 motherboard
2x 233MMX CPU's
512mb RAM
Matrox G450 PCI 32mb
Buslogic UW SCSI controller
8x20 CDR
9.1gb Seagate Cheetah 1.6" half height
Creative Vibra16 Sound
Intel 10/100 PCI LAN

[TechGeek]

Re: Some More Retro PC Uniqueness - The Tyan S1564D Build

A Vibra16 card! My '93 GW2K system has a Vibra16X in it, and if the two cards are similar, then there's a good shot that your card can do SB Pro emulation.