A lone A3000T motherboard - where to get a case?

[Amiga_CDTV]

Hello.

After a find from eBay, I now have a loose working motherboard of an Amiga 3000T. The board (which is a Rev 6.1, A/W 313194, FAB 313193, pic here) have had battery damage but was fixed by the previous owner and there is now a new battery installed and the affected area is restored. There are Kickstart 3.1 ROMs installed and there is 2 Mb of chip-RAM and 12 Mb of Fast-RAM (I had suitable zip-rams at hand).

I have built an adapter to use the board with a modern ATX power supply (pic, the jumper is used to switch on the PSU). I have booted the board several times and everything seems to be working.

Also for testing purposes I built a small thingy with the needed power- and hdd- leds and a reset key (pic, jumper is for testing the keybd/mouse lock).

I found a good re-make of the schematics here.

I have now collected almost all the cables and parts I need for a basic setup (still looking for an external SCSI terminator, the board is missing the terminator-resistor packs) and now the big question (pun intended) remains: where can I get a case to house the board? I am not expecting to find an original case (still, if anyone here does have an extra 3000T case for parts, I am interested!) but thinking of getting some very large ATX case where to board could be made to fit.

Any ideas on how to proceed from here?

[freqmax]

One path is to order a remake from a plastic mould manufacturer.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Have you seen this thread on Amibay?  It's not closed, so case may still be available?

http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=44139&highlight=3000+case

[tone007]

There are some cool old server cases around, I had one of these once I wanted to put an Amiga in.

[DutchinUSA]

That's a desktop case

I will probably end up keeping that, the mobo wasn't as badly damaged as I expected :cool: .. looks like just some minor damage right where battery was located but won't know till I put all the chips back on and test.

[haywirepc]

I'd just find an old 486 or pentium full tower case on ebay and get some amiga stickers or something... Your not too likely to find an a3000t case.

[Kawazu]

You could sell the motherboard to me so i have a spare :-)

[Amiga_CDTV]

@Kawazu: I knew somebody was going to suggest something like that

Just for reference on the size of the board: attached is a picture of an old Pentium-something -age half-ATX (or whatever that size was called) motherboard next to the A3000T's motherboard. Yes, it's that huge!

I have two or three ATX cases at home but they are all way too small to house the A3000T board.

I have been looking on eBay for some full-tower PC cases. Fitting the PSU might be a problem. I have seen mentioned that the original A3000T PSU is rated only about 135W so some modern Small Form Factor -pc PSU (with enough wattage) might be an easier fit than a normal-sized ATX PSU.

What I am worried is that if I buy a huge case and then find out that the board won't fit inside well (or needs heavy modifications on thick metal parts) I would be in serious trouble with space! :razz: Not to mention that some of cases I have seen on eBay are just hideous! I just couldn't bear to have an AMIGA inside some ugly PC case!

[hese7]

Actually the A3000T PSU is 280 Watts, A3000D PSU is 135 Watts.

[carvedeye]

Would this case be any good?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AT-Server-Chassis-AT-Tower-PC-Case-With-AT-300W-PSU-ECS5000-AT-/200919853092?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopComponents_RL&hash=item2ec7c1a824

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Just for reference on the size of the board: attached is a picture of an old Pentium-something -age half-ATX (or whatever that size was called) motherboard next to the A3000T's motherboard. Yes, it's that huge!

That's an mATX board.  And OMG!!  I'd be surprised if anything from the ATX sizes is going to fit that board.  Maybe time to start looking at server cases.  

[haywirepc]

That IS a huge motherboard by todays standards, but back then, anyone remember original XT or AT size motherboards? They were often just as big, with 8 expansion slots...

If that was my motherboard, I'd go with THIS case :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Raidmax-Agusta-ATX-605BT-No-Power-Supply-ATX-Full-Tower-Case-Black-Titanium-CA-/271190756042?pt=US_Computer_Cases&hash=item3f243a8aca

[salax54]

@Amiga_CDTV: I can understand how you feel my friend! I have had the exact opposite problem. Whereas i too was eager to obtain an A3000T, but decided this would never happen... Partly due to the rarity of the item, partly because even if i found one, shipping from anywhere would be prohibitive.
So, i decided to build a replica Amiga. And just as i was about to start making a case, i found an empty A3000T case through ebay.
The rest is all here: http://greekamiga.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/amiga-a3000t-replica/
You might find some info usefull and as you can see, the case was not even complete, so i had to rebuild stuff from scratch.
There actually are tower cases that i believe could fit your mobo; you just have to be lucky enough to find one!
As another example which shows that such 'monstrous' towers do exist, here's another of my mods:
http://www.amigahellas.gr/showthread.php?5260-Die-Griechische-Panzer-tower-!-%28%CE%BA%CE%BF%CE%B9%CE%BD%CF%8E%CF%82-%CE%912000-GRT%29
Good luck with whatever you decide. :pint:

[Amiga_CDTV]

@salax54: thanks, that was an awesome build-story.

What do you guys think about this one? Quite cheap (even with postages) and certainly enough height (But really, how needs TEN 5,25" slots?!!). Looking at the insides I am still worried if the board fits there in width. There seems to be a little space between the case and the 5,25" mounting bracket but I doubt the ZIP RAMs on the top-right corner of the board would fit "under" the bracket. Of course the bracked could be cut slightly if that's needed (I can live with less than ten 5,25" slots!). The front of the case (at least on the first picture) remainds me of the Commodore's A4000T.

[TheBilgeRat]

Not sure if you are still looking for this, but it looks like Doomy has one for sale here in P-town:

http://portland.craigslist.org/wsc/sys/3779008922.html

EDIT:  No affiliation, YMMV, etc etc.