Commander X16

Long before, from the beginning, I wanted the X16 board without a case.

Because.... I already had one.  My old 386sx’s case, a 1U-sized (CORRECTION: 3U!)  “pizza box”, is one of the few relics I’ve kept from my distant past.  This beast, made of battleship-grade steel, has two 3.5” bays and a generous interior, quite sufficient for any version of the X16.  Or an X16 plus an X8.

And the X16 is totally so worthy of this case.

 

I have an old pentium I big tower laying around... can be a fun case too^^

and there is room for some other things.... I mean... all the things ?

 

This is it! One case to rule them all! With 16x KVM switch, pi, x8,x16, c64,specci,mega65,pyra

I truly liked the case design based on the S605, I think it nailed the "modern retro" theme pretty darn well.

That being said, I had already thought about how cool it would be to mount the hardware in something else, mainly becasue I am a system builder and have been for a very long time. I like to mod, I like to do it all myself, and my tastes change over time. This is why I would like it in kit form, or just an assembled board if we don't have a kit. I would like to build my own personal look around it. One great thing about using a standardized form factor, you have SO many options. Like classic beige! Or pull an LGR and go with something more original to appease my own personal retro desires.

?

 

For the first five years when I lived in China, I had the luxury of a home base at the family home in NE Ohio, where I was storing all my old stuff, including my old obsolete desktop PC's ... and they were old and obsolete and not working perfectly well when I had left for China.

But then, the family home had to get prepared to be sold, and one thing I did was gut the best of the two desktop PC's and send most of the innards to the electronic recycling, but kept the case.

The idea was, if I could every conceivably afford a CX16p, it would have to be the bare board without a case option.

So it's sitting somewhere in a storage shed in someone's backyard, and hopefully mice are not building a nest in the Power Supply.

If the Phase 2 will be a thing, then I'm thinking about this one:

https://myretrocomputer.com/product/my64/

I really want to have the X16 inside a all-in-one wedge keyboard. For Phase 1 I'll probably have to design my own case...

I'm thinking about something similar for the mATX board:

 

LOVE the Mister Wedge!

1 hour ago, rje said:

LOVE the Mister Wedge!

Yeah, if someone sold an injection molded version of this (or even a flat pack acrylic version), I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

And @AndyMt I have the same keycap set on my PiDP-11 setup. I love that keyboard.

On 8/21/2021 at 5:24 PM, rje said:

My old 386sx’s case, a 1U sized “pizza box”, is one of the few relics I’ve kept from my distant past.  This beast, made of battleship-grade steel, has two 3.5” bays and a generous interior, quite sufficient for any version of the X16.  Or an X16 plus an X8.

If you get a chance, show us a picture! Even if it's still empty for now.  Would be cool to see.

5 hours ago, John Chow Seymour said:

If you get a chance, show us a picture! Even if it's still empty for now.  Would be cool to see.

Here it is:



 

I searched online and it's a lot like similar boxes for 386SX machines... this one for instance: