Revamping Nostalgia.

Restoring the Chieftec Dragon.

Right before Covid-19 started back in March of 2020, I had decided I would need a desktop to do 3D modeling on Solidworks, mainly because my laptop was barely holding on. I have a love for vintage electronics so I only found it fitting to want to do a new PC build in an old case. I ordered a bunch of parts for internals and then set out to find a vintage case. Upon visiting home, I inquired about the green Chieftec Dragon case that had been in our family for 20 years. My father had used it as a gaming PC in the early 2000s and my brother and I had used it after him as a hand-me-down. It was my first cool-looking PC case and doubled as an excellent footrest when I was a kid. The case was… heavily used, in another 3 or so PC builds for my other two brothers and the family PC for a bit. After some looking for the Chieftec, I found it in two separate trash bags outside for the trash. It had been thrown out as a result of snow, was buried, and not collected by the garbage truck. So I had most of the pieces I needed to complete the case but was missing the front door, the plastic part that breaks on all of these.

I set out to obtain another case and scoured Craigslist for “Old Computers” until I finally came across one. I took it home and salvaged what I could from the blue cat pee-covered case. I set out to 3D print a door based on the original that I had gotten from the blue door and came up with the model shown below. After printing one, I came to the consensus that I would rather have the old blue door painted to keep the same weight and feel as the original so I scrapped the 3D printed one (which had a print defect anyways) and painted them blue. I researched for a long time and bought many samples to try to find a close paint color without spending a fortune to have one made. Testors’ Lime Ice ended up being the closest color (as seen in the header) and at $10 or so a can I used 12 cans. I then sanded, polished, and coated the plexiglass to make it look good as new, used some Chrysler Bright Silver Metallic (my Jeeps color) to touch up the aluminum frame, and riveted the thing back together after paint. I then sought out period-correct UV cold cathode lighting for my case, and this proved difficult until I put out a forum help page and got a response to buy some from Taiwan. After receiving the bits, I put everything together for the computer I made this very website on. I have plans to polish up the door model, and then restore the old blue case with a different color frame.