case mods

legacy case mods

decorative panel from the mdportal elite case mdportal elite
Started as a DOS/Win95 gaming machine powered by a 486 DX 80 from ST Micro. It went through a few component upgrades and case refreshes. Extensive metal fabrication and old-school cable customization and lighting.


dragon case front profile view dragon
A portable/luggable scratch-built rig built around an ABit AB-NV7m motherboard fit into a gutted DVD player. Showcases a range of build techniques including light metal and wood working, electrical and cable customization. Conceived as a portable LAN gaming computer, it instead spent a lot of time recording DJ sets from bars and house parties. I may in the future attempt a re-work of this project- it's the only one left in a semi-complete state.


Rei&Asuka front profile view rei&asuka
Another "luggable" rig. It blended the lines between scratch-build and mod- it spliced two cases together to hold two complete motherboards/systems in one "unit". Way too large and heavy to be practical and more art piece than case, but a fun build, and the last one I made.


about

cutting a computer case with angle grinder circa 2002 I've been organizing and consolidating my old backup data over the last year. And as I've slogged through a quarter century of digital detritus, I've been re-discovering a lot of old case mod project logs.

I stepped away from modding around 2008 with several projects going unrealized. My best documented work dates from the early 2000's - 2001 to 2003. These projects were documented on three different iterations of the site. So the first project work logs will be reformatted and re-worked project logs pulled out of those old backups and filed under "Legacy Case Mods".

cutting a computer case with angle grinder circa 2002 Going through my old bookmarks I could find only one example of a still-functional1 self-hosted site documenting modding work from that time. So I'm restoring my own old logs, just for the sake of archiving the work. Expect plenty of low-res photos. These projects are all currently inactive.


  1. Most project logs from that time period are incomplete or gone entirely. Many people tracked projects in forums, using services like Photobucket to store high-res images. A change to Photobucket's payment model in 2017 led to millions of images being inaccessible. That left a small number of self-hosted sites to document modding work from that time, and sadly those have largely expired. ↩︎