While forced to use a slow, pathetically slow computer at work, I misclicked on TBCS during a sudden refresh stutter ... and ended up on the very last page of the Chatterbox.
The Future in Modding, started in early 2005, caught my eye.
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While forced to use a slow, pathetically slow computer at work, I misclicked on TBCS during a sudden refresh stutter ... and ended up on the very last page of the Chatterbox.
The Future in Modding, started in early 2005, caught my eye.
Seems to have gone the way that most people said. More pre-built nice cases. More modding supply shops. OEMs providing more options (Dell has had choose-your-color laptops/desktops on and off for years).
That was a blast from the past. The people who responded to that 2005 post are all inactive.
Modding has declined in the last ten years along with LAN parties. The rise of high speed internet hurt LAN parties. People showed off their mods at LAN parties. Now that there are fewer LAN parties, there's fewer mods.
Affordable 3D printers may give modding a comeback. You don't need any fabrication skill to make a plastic object with a 3D printer. But, you still need to be able to draw with some type of computer aided drawing software.
I'm a bit of a fence-sitter on the whole notion.
Modders of yesteryear had to DIY, build from scratch, invent and improvise. Make your own fan controller. Dremel your own window. Figure out how to plug that fancy automotive bling into an ATX form factor. Largely for unique cosmetic makeovers (which isn't really my thing, personally, generally a little too overboard with garish and ostentatious for my tastes) ... but sometimes functional and efficient. Even some clever tricks and innovations which make computers more powerful.
Modders today basically spend money and put together computer LEGO blocks. Forgive me for saying so, but assembling a LEGO toy really ain't all that hard, and it doesn't matter how many different boxes and sets all those special blocks came from, in the end all you can really build is just another LEGO creation. Not unique, not inspired. No craftsmanship.
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of old-school modders around, there's still a lot of craft - material and technological - which makes me pause in wonder. But the mainstream just buys off-the-shelf. It's a little tiring to see cookie-cutter part variations of the same tired old Lian Li case, ROG motherboard, and silly Corsair h110. (Tiring, too, that most places people automatically claim to have rock-stable 5GHz overclocks and all the latest-greatest $$$$ toys ... many do, I'm sure, but it seems highly improbable that nobody on the internet seems to run anything else.)
3D printing is awesome stuff. But methinks it will remain in the domain of nerds for a decade or two to come. Perhaps little 3D printshops will proliferate our cities, the way shops with plotters and vinyl-cutters already have. The overwhelming majority of people (that I've encountered) couldn't run any kind of image-editing or CAD-like application to save their lives, too complicated it seems.
I can easily afford one of the lower priced 3D printers. Although I think they are really cool, I have not purchased one. I could not think of enough stuff to make with one to justify ownership. I've seen a few things that would be nice to print, but not nice enough to need a 3D printer to make.
It might stay in the domain of nerds for a while. Most of the people I know are software engineers. They probably know how to read blueprints and use CAD. If I was not married to a non-technical woman, I would have a harder time understanding how the other 80 to 90% of the population lives.
I think bakeries will use 3D printers to create custom shapes out of chocolate for wedding or birthday cakes. They already put pictures on cakes with food coloring and 2D printers. 3D scanners would have to do the heavy lifting of making the CAD model to print. That would be a non-nerd application of the 3D printing technology.
I suppose if you were to restore old things, it would come in handy to fabricate hard to find plastic parts that have broke or rotted away. Did you guys ever notice that no one ever restores old PC's? Have you ever seen anyone restore an old 386 PC to its original DOS/Win 3.1? I'll admit that I have put the old software on a VM that I rarely ever look at.
You are right about how modding was different in 2005. More parts are available to plug and play your own "mod" now.
I can't think of any reason a nerd would want to 3D print computer plastics made out of last century's awful beige. Restoring an old C64 or Model-M is one thing, but a 386DX2/66 just don't seem worth the effort. Not even for the flying toasters. Just sayin'
To be honest, I do not understand the desire to restore old things. I may be more into history now that I'm older, but I still have no desire to restore an old car to its original specs. I would rather drive something new with an airbag and other better technology.
So, whenever someone tells me that they like to restore old stuff, I ask them why old computers are not restored. Then I ask if they would rather go to war with an M16 or an M1 Garand.
Interesting how it was the modding movement that killed itself. We created entire industries geared toward providing those things that people were creating themselves and thus killed the need to make them. As Konrad pointed out there are still the true creators out there but we as a whole made the hobby into the modular cookie-cutter image we see today. Where there's a demand there will be a supply.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xpirate
Personally, I'm glad there are enough different pieces in the selection of Legos to still make wonderful amazing things. :)
I'm more fascinated by the proliferation of incredible technological toys - microcontrollers, SBCs, SoCs, CNC machining, laser tools, 3D printing, prebuilt touchscreens and VRMs and components galore - which allow DIY types to actually build their own Lego blocks to custom spec. This is, paradoxically, exactly why half the "real" modders out there have started up websites aimed at selling their particular Lego crafts to the mainstream, giving us all the many delightful Lego choices we have.
It goes a little overboard sometimes. Impossible, for example, to find performance RAM anymore which doesn't come equipped with (nearly impossible to remove) uselessly garish heatspreaders. But I guess as long as people on keep buying them then other people will keep on selling them.