Fortiva 3000

By 1994, Leading Edge had gone bankrupt and had been sold to Daewoo, their former primary hardware supplier. Leading Edge's Fortiva line of computers was Daewoo's attempts to revitalize the floundering computer division with fresh new models and a new model name that apparently was derived from Latin for "strong life". The Fortiva 3000 was a much more compact and cost−reduced sibling to the more feature−rich and substantially larger Fortiva 4000 and 5000 machines. Though small, the Fortiva 3000 still came equipped with hardware and expandability that would suit most users in the mid 1990s and at the same time take up a much smaller desktop footprint.

The Fortiva 3000 was encased in a small yet attractive white case. The case measured 16.25" long by 13.5" wide by 4" high and weighed 15 pounds. The computer's footprint was much smaller than most of its contemporaries which would have freed up precious desk space to make room for a printer or scanner or both. The Fortiva 3000's styling was very subdued and minimal with most effort put into the front of the machine. Each side of the Fortiva 3000 was flat white steel with absolutely no bends, molds, or vents anywhere. The same was repeated on the top of the computer's case; flat, white steel with no vents, or other design appointments at all. Meanwhile, the front of the computer was made out of injection molded plastic and featured a very subtle curvature on the left side of the plastic face. This curvature started just at the far left side and curved outward slightly and then curved back inward toward the right side of the floppy drive. Once this curvature terminated after the floppy drive, the remainder of the plastic face was flat. One 5.25" expansion bay with cutout was available on the right−hand side of the computer that allowed users to add in a 5.25" floppy drive or a CD−ROM drive, which at the time was gaining popularity in computing. Back to the left−hand side of the computer face was where most styling appointments were located. The 3.5" floppy drive was located near the top of the left hand side and a new Leading Edge logo with minimalist inspirations appeared. Gone was the red, white, and blue triple tringle that had graced Leading Edge products for nearly a decade and in its place was a grayscale triple triangle with a fairly traditional "Leading" in gray and "Edge" in a shade of lavender with the vertical posts of the letter "E"s deleted, giving the "E" the appearance of three horizontal lines. Right of the face−lifted logo were the LED indicators for the hard drive and power and a round reset button to the right of those. At the bottom of the left−hand side of the plastic faceplate was something that Leading Edge had never done before; there, one could find the model's name / logo, with "fortiva" written in green, miniscule italics and 3000 as gray.

The case opened with three Phillips screws located on the back of the steel case, removing these screws and tilting the back of the case up at a steep angle allowed the steel cover to escape from the plastic front's hold, allowing access to the interesting hardware within. With the cover off, it was revealed to the user that there was a fairly distinct lack of hardware for a 486 PC. This could be attributed to the fact that this was a cheaper, stripped down computer inside of a small case. Given the lack of documentation about the Fortiva 3000 series, we have to make certain assumptions about this particular example. It may be noticed that the equipped CPU is a Cyrix DX2 66 486, a quite powerful CPU prior to the rollout of the Pentium generation, especially since most Fortiva 5000 PCs were equipped with SX 50 486 CPUs, we can infer that this was an upgrade made later in the computer's life. Additional credence to the possibility of ventage upgrades is the fact that the VRAM upgrade socket is also populated. Most likely, the Fortiva 3000 line was factory−populated with 486 SX CPUs. Unfortunately, we do not have any documentation that can confirm that conjecture at this time.

Aside from the CPU issue, one could see that inside this machine there was an unusual layout. The motherboard was a baby−AT board, the power supply a compact and proprietary design but with standard Molex and AT connectors. The hard drive has been located in an unusual position directly above the power supply. It's likely this may have caused problems with the hard drive's longevity due to extra induced vibrations from the power supply but this is speculation as ours did not come with its original drive. The front of the machine has space enough for a front−mounted hard drive as well as leaving the top expansion bay open for future 5.25" drives. Video was integrated on the motherboard and the computer did not come with a sound card or onboard sound. The only sound available was from a small buzzer speaker on the motherboard, not even an actual PC speaker. Cache started at zero, but could be upgraded to 64K, 128K, or 256K by way of the DIP sockets on the motherboard. Since the computer did come with a riser board with three available 16−bit ISA slots, upgradeability was relatively viable. Note in photo 11 that we have installed a Sound Blaster 16 CR2950 card, which is a pretty long card at 9.5" , into the middle slot. Populating a nice sound card still leaves room enough for a modem and an uprated video card.

In summary, the Fortiva 3000 represented an interesting transitional point in Leading Edge's history, an effort by Daewoo to maintain the company's presence in the personal computer market with a smaller, more affordable machine that still offered reasonable expandability for the time. While its compact design and minimal styling stood out among bulkier contemporaries, its internal configuration revealed both cost−saving measures and the flexibility to accommodate upgrades as user needs evolved. Despite its modest beginnings and the uncertainty surrounding its exact configurations, the Fortiva 3000 remains a noteworthy example of mid−1990s desktop design, reflecting both the ingenuity and the challenges faced by computer manufacturers during a rapidly changing technological era.