The three 5.25 inch drives bother me. Most PCs with that sort of aesthetic from the 80s or 90s with a real floppy connector can only run two floppy drives without needing some pretty weird bios and OS config.
As soon as I saw this I thought, “I’d like to have a horizontal one, like a Mac or Compaq from 1995.” Turns out, the second sentence says that’s what they did last year. (https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/pc-cases/retro-beige-pc-case-goes-from-april-fools-joke-to-retail-silverstones-sleeper-pc-with-modern-internals-ships-in-q1-2025)
I think it looks great, especially the horizontal one. Lately I’ve been thinking about putting my current parts into a new case so that I can add a DVD drive. I still have a lot of games from 1999 - 2010ish that are on discs, and I’d like to be able to actually use them.
Also, my gaming PC is in my living room, like a console. A horizontal case would be perfect for that.
Put in real 5 1/4" disk drives, you cowards! And a PCIe or (internal) USB floppy controller with IDC-34 connector, while you’re at it.
I think it has those. The phrasing in the article is weird, but it says those are real 5.25" drive bays, not just for looks.
I don’t want them just to include empty 5 1/4" drive bays and some covers that look like floppy drives; I want them to fill those drive bays with actual functioning 5 1/4" floppy drives! 🤪
(Also, external 5 1/4" drive bays are absolutely still useful in 2025. You can get hot-swap bays for 3.5", 2.5", or I think maybe even M.2 drives now that can fit in them. It’s great for a home server.)
“From the images, you might suspect that the FLP02 features usable 5.25-inch bays. These are very rare to find on cases in 2025, but they can still be useful for enthusiasts and tinkerers, with the potential to fit optical and removable drives, or for front mounting more I/O. The FLP02 has three such bays. Unused, you can just leave the dummy 5.25-inch floppy fascias in place.”
We also noted that the supplied key locks the power button, as it did on some ancient systems.
The ancient systems I knew didn’t have a power button, and instead power was controlled by a physical switch on the high voltage side of the power supply.
The key actually locked out the keyboard, which was possible since the keyboard had a dedicated connector. So you could still turn the computer on, but you really couldn’t use it.
I suppose locking out the power button is a suitable replacement for a modern case.
It’s not a proper 80’s case unless the power switch is on the back.
