[dusted]

Browsing towers the other day I was astonished how many of the "higher end" towers didn't have drive bays at all.. I still want my workstation to have a optical drive, 3.5 and 5.25 drives (the diskette drives are run by cryofluxes since humanity has apparantly lost the ability to build floppy controllers into motherboards)

[hakfoo]

I bought a "modern" case a while back (Corsair 275Q) and then ended up ripping the front panel open so I could bolt an optical drive and flash-media reader in the spot.

TBH, I'm amazed nobody does a packaged product like the old SCSI enclosures-- one or two 5.25" bays, and a hub PCB connected to a couple of USB->SATA adapters. That would at least solve the people who have decent optical drives or hot-swap cartridges for their hard drives. If it had a few USB headers included, you could wire a Greaseweazel internally to it for floppies.

I've thought about finding an old Shuttle-style case and building one, but that's probably bigger and clumsier than a purpose-built product. You sometimes see the older external optical drives cheap in thrift stores and the like (where it's clearly a real drive and a USB->SATA or PATA adapter inside) but they always seem divorced from their custom power cables.