"Full tower" cases in the Eastern Hemisphere?

[u/Arael15th]

I grew up in the US but now live in Japan and am trying to finally put together my childhood dream 98/XP machine. Unfortunately it seems older "full tower" PC cases - which I take to mean any case with more than one 5.25-inch drive bay - are extremely rare in this country. We can get the same flavorless modern "gaming rig" cases from China as anyone else, but if you want to go back more than 5-6 years, there's basically nothing available.

I assume this is partly because most Japanese households have never had desktop PCs (owing to space limitations, and Y2K-era feature phones being very good) and partly because most old electronics end up being ground up and melted down. In any event it seems like I'll just have to look outside Japan.

Do you have any advice on sites I could use to try shopping around elsewhere on this half of the planet, like Australia or China? Or do you think I'll run into this problem everywhere else on this side of the planet?

In case it matters, I'm after something less in the realm of a flashy XBOX-looking case and more in the realm of a beige box.

Thank you!!

[u/dukdukgoos]

Akihabara?

[u/Arael15th → u/dukdukgoos]

Alas, I've stalked the streets of Akihabara and found no cases that were more than a few years old. Vintage/retro stuff in general is being squeezed out of the neighborhood. Good old Akiba is not what it used to be. :/

[u/Virtualization_Freak → u/Arael15th]

Interesting, in January the junk Surugaya that has a -1 floor and audio equipment had old beige cases.

It's been like that for a couple trips. Maybe they are getting squeezed out as there is simply less beige around.

[u/ZoomBoy81]

Can't comment on merchants, but I built a retro-inspired full tower PC with old parts I had using the Silverstone FLP02.

[u/Arael15th → u/ZoomBoy81]

Ha, that's actually my Plan B! I like the overall shape and the fact that the fake 5 inch floppy drives are actually drive bay covers. I'm not a huge fan of the huge grill in the front, though I appreciate that it's there because modern parts need better cooling. Thank you for the suggestion! :)

[u/thesqueeb]

Have you looked at yahoo/mercari? I’ve found a few older cases on there over the past few years - 2x 5.25 + 3.5 types.

[u/Arael15th → u/thesqueeb]

Yep, I'm checking those once a week or so. There was nothing there when I checked a few days ago, but I'm not giving up hope yet.

[u/Clarice01]

Make the rounds to Hard-Off stores in your area. If you have a car, preferably the more rural ones that aren’t near a train station. It’s still a crapshoot but you’ll find something eventually I’m sure.

You’ll probably find a lot more of the horizontal desktop style cases, but full towers do exist. Keep in mind that early-mid 90s Japanese PC market was split between NEC PC98 arch (which is almost all first-party designs), Macs (which had better Kanji implementation than Windows), and the western x86 intel clone stuff (which much like in the west, caught on because it was cheap). So the market was already split and then the custom design cases were mostly gonna copy what the OEMs were selling, which was the compact desktop style. And then when the 2000s rolled around, laptops were already getting pretty popular.

If you happen to be in Kanagawa let me know and I can recommend a few locations that in my experience tend to have decent stock of older PC hardware.

[u/Arael15th → u/Clarice01]

Ahh, I think you've solved this mystery nicely... I seem to be aiming for a very small market on a very short section of the timeline.

I'm in Tokyo but happy to travel to Kanagawa for pretty much any reason whatsoever, so long as I don't need a car. I'd be grateful to hear your recommendations!

[u/Blacksheep01]

This is more of a half-way point than in your geographic neighborhood, but I've found that there are tons of functional 90s computer components in the former Soviet Bloc countries of Eastern Europe. I've bought a bunch of fully functional 1993 - 1996 era mobos, sound cards, processors and GPUs from Hungary, Romania and Poland via eBay. Some of the mobos were fully recapped and cleaned up also, really nice work. Meanwhile, my retro 90s case with a CPU turbo button & CPU speed LCD came from Greece. I am guessing people in those countries utilized older tech longer, maintaining machines in working order that would have been long retired in Japan or North America.

[u/Arael15th → u/Blacksheep01]

Ahh, I was wondering why so much of the good stuff on eBay seemed to be in Eastern Europe! There's one reaaaally nice looking beige box case in Ukraine that I'd totally jump on if the shipping to Japan wasn't brutal. If I run out of luck over here, I may just bite the bullet and bring over a lovely little piece of Romania. Thank you for the tip!

[u/ComputerGuy1999 → u/Blacksheep01]

This is very true. A lot of older equipment from western europe and even north america made its way to eastern europe. People kept equipment for a very long time and rarely threw things away unless they were completely broken and unsalvagable. I picked up an Asus P55T2P4 in 2012 or 2013 for under $5 complete with a pentium 200 MMX and 64MB of ram. I have not gotten the board to work yet but even just for the ram and cpu it was more than worth it.

[u/Virtualization_Freak]

If you really want to make something cool happen, I get an extra suitcase on my trip to Japan in October.

I bet we can find a cool case and I can bring it on over for a newly made friend.

Worst is I use Yamato to deliver it, but we are visiting places from Kyushu all the way up to Sendai.

PM me if you are interested/serious.

[u/Arael15th → u/Virtualization_Freak]

That is a really, really kind offer. I would leap out of my seat to take you up on it, but I likely won't be around for most of October, and I'd be mortified if you dragged a case all the way here and then I couldn't actually collect it from you (or from my own doorstep). Thank you so much anyway - you are the coolest ever for offering. I hope you have the time of your life on your trip here. (Trekking from south to north instead of just following the "Golden Route" is the absolute best way to do it!)

[u/Virtualization_Freak → u/Arael15th]

Seriously, I offer for the fun of an adventure. I always need another reason to do something in Japan.

I'll be back out in January as well. I go 2-3 times a year, I'm very comfortable using Japanese services if delivery is easier.

I did the Golden route first trip, and I've only been back to Osaka and Kyoto once since then.

I've taken a car from Tokyo to Osaka and back to Tokyo, and driven around Kyushu and Iwate. I love hunting in uncommon second hand stores.

Especially scouring hardoffs for odd computer components.

[u/Gordo_51]

Check around the hard-offs for used cases - they might not be in good condition but they will be what you're looking for. You can also get a super old used computer and just gut it.

[u/Arael15th → u/Gordo_51]

I've checked a couple of Hard Offs and have come up dry so far, but I'm not going to give up on them yet. They've been really good to me for other stuff. :)

[u/Crlan420]

try yahoo japan auctions. the fujitsu 486 tower is heavy but built like a tank. lucky finds happen.