A Brief History of Modding.

   About five years ago, give or take, some creative, but bored computer dudes were sitting around talking shop when a freak accident with an innocent and unassuming Dremel tool left a gaping hole in the side of an equally innocent and unassuming PC. The cutout showed off the Geek Stud innards of a high performance box. (Prolly a 266 MHz speed DEMON.)

   It also added some much needed air-flow to cool things down from another PC "movement" of the [H]ard Core...Over Clocking. It also let in a lot of things besides air, like cheetos crumbs, dust and cat hair. Being the bright bunch we are somebody added a Plexiglas window and a few extra fans. And a few more fans. As clock speeds went up so did the number of fans. Right about then the wonderful world of LAN gaming was also really starting to take off. Everything was in place for an underground revolution in computing. Pimped PC's...God Boxes...Modding was born.

   What followed was a sort of engineering seesaw of problem/innovation/new problem. All those windows were great but it was dark and scary in there and small children and little old ladies would slink away in fear...besides nobody could see your latest swag. The solution...LIGHTS. Now everybody could see your stuff but couldn't talk about it because of the roar of twenty something fans doing an impersonation of an F-18 Hornet taking off...from an Aircraft Carrier...in a Hurricane.

   The Solution? Fan control via a baybus. One outstanding Modder went the extra mile and built one and SHARED the plans and how to know how with the rest of us. His reward was fellowship. He didn't make a dime from his little invention...even when his design was knocked off and sold by a few big companies.

   He posted tons of how to guides and tips on his site for the good of our developing little community. Because of him I have always shared anything I learned with others and tried to help "the little ones". He knows who he is and what he did...and so do we. In addition to establishing the Creed of community we still follow to this day, Cliff and his BayBus made it clear that there was a market for "Mod stuff" and slowly but surly products began to arrive.

   A window just riveted into your case was tacky. Solution...window gaskets. Lugging the things around was a pain. Solution...handles. White light sucks and it generates heat. Solution...Neon, then Cold Cathode and Led's and all the variations we have today.

    As Overclocks got bigger and badder thanks to sites like [H]ardOCP so did the heat. Solution...extreme air cooling, then water cooling and Thermo Electric peltier and the big daddy, Vapor faze change cooling.

   LAN gaming morphed into LAN Parties and then into "gatherings of mammoth proportions" with Professional Cyber Athletes and big prize money. ( I remember my friend, LAN gaming Clan mate, and modding buddy Victor sending me a Link from [H] with the text "Dude..there giving away a CAR!!! Dallas here we come.)

   Cases went from painted and tweaked "Beige boxes" to brushed and or anodized aluminum. Windows got bigger and started appearing all over the case. Some are now completely clear Plexiglas marvels of light and visibility. Windows got Appliqués and then Laser etchings. All those windows made the tired old green or gold standard PCB's of Motherboards and video cards look kind of drab. So we got boards in black, then red which brings us to now and a rainbow of choices. Most Board manufactures have taken a sort of color identity. A blue motherboard? Prolly Gigabyte. Red? MSI. Sam e plain old gold that isn't plain anymore? ASUS. Flat cables looked ugly and blocked airflow. We rounded them by hand, then we got pre-rounded cables. Now they come in colors, are UV reactive, glow in the dark and as amazing as it sounds...still move data "to and fro".

   Now when I look back at my first modded box, or go through some of the old postings at Virtual-Hideout.net I almost feel nostalgic. Today it is harder than ever to build out a righteous rig that qualifies as " Pimp ". But I still feel just as excited about the "next project" as I ever have. With all the wonderful products available from so many quality companies, the sponsorship and modding competitions from Companies Like CompUSA, the creative possibilities are truly limitless. GO BUILD SOMETHING. Then go strut it with some buds. Feel the pride in saying " Yea, I built it myself, and I'm going to spend the next 12 hours or so using it to school your LLAMA loving self in the finer points of fragging."

Modders Mantra: You should see my NEXT box!