Playskool colors of earlier motherboards

[jtvang125]

Why did companies use such bright and different colors on the various slots and ports of their earlier boards? For example my 775 board has yellow for one channel of ram, red for ide, orange for sata, baby blue for usb headers, and then dark blue and brown for pci-e.

I guess it makes it easier to distinguish them but the manual never references them by their color so there's almost no point. One thing was for sure though was that they look damn ugly. It's a good thing that companies are moving towards fewer and darker colors and colors that contrast better with one another.

 

[nerp]

It was the trend. And yes, it was very tacky. Remember some of the ridiculous cases of the era? There are still some ugly cases out there but back then it was insane how horrible some of them were, and there were many.

 

[Wall Street]

It is easier to plug in connectors without additional lighting. At one point cases were much more cramped, cables were thicker (ribbon cables) and people were unlikely to see your motherboard daily, so making connector in highly visible colors made sense.

 

[will889]

Back in the day there were definitely some interesting color combinations on boards. Gigabyte being famous for that here is a pic of a mobo I used long ago.

 

[UsandThem]

Back in the day there were definitely some interesting color combinations on boards. Gigabyte being famous for that here is a pic of a mobo I used long ago.

Gigabyte was pretty bad. But I think the worst offender was Soyo:

 

[VirtualLarry]

Some of that color, on the ATX I/O panel and whatnot, was dictated by the Intel / MS "PC '97" (98? 99?) standard. That's why the line-in port is blue, the speaker port is lime green, the mic-in port is pink, the PS/2 keyboard port is purple, and the PS/2 mouse port is green.

 

[Raduque]

I love the old "fruit salad' color boards - I kind miss them!

Anybody remember those slick silver Epox boards?

 

[UsandThem]

I love the old "fruit salad' color boards - I kind miss them!

Anybody remember those slick silver Epox boards?

It's crazy looking back at the motherboard reviews in the late 90's and early 2000's, and realizing how many companies were bought out, went bankrupt, or got out of the retail motherboard market.

Iwill, Abit, Epox, Soyo, Aopen, Azza, Chaintech, DFI, Shuttle, PC Chips, Jetway, and Procomp are the ones I remember.

Then there's Biostar and ECS that might as well be dead in the retail market. I remember just waiting to read reviews on the new motherboards, because back then there usually a big difference between the top and bottom ranking boards.

 

[Raduque]

I remember all of those except Procomp, Azza and PC Chips. My favorite board from that era was the old Ecs K7S5A. Had several of those. All the boards I have with me now are Gigabyte fruit salad boards from about 2008 or older. I also have an Epox nForce SLI board somewhere.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Yeah, it's much better now.

 

[RaistlinZ]

There was some real tacky sh*t back in the day.