BOSS: FX57 by TechDaddy

Boss Striping

The first thing I started working on was the Boss striping. On the 1969, it was unique in that it was a side panel only design, but it extended from the front quarter panels and swept back over the door to the rear quarter panel. The 1970 vintage changed this graphic layout. I prefer the 1969 (obviously), and went to work on customizing the striping to incorporate this mod's "engine". The original stripe has the BOSS on top, with the "302" designation underneath signifying the cubic inch displacement of the engine.

Since this is a computer, I found it only fitting that I use the processor "speed rating" instead of engine displacement. Imagine the shock on my face when AMD stepped up with the biggest, baddest, fastest processor of the time, the FX-57! So, custom striping was created to denote the "displacement" on this "engine". I created a custom design in a vector graphic file, cleaned it up as much as I could, then shipped it to a friend of mine (Damon Law is an incredible artist and Photoshop master) for final clean up.

Once the vector graphic was created, I printed a 1:1 paper copy (large format printer from my local Kinko's) of the logo to make sure that my measurements had been correct, and that the striping would fall where I expected it to fall on the side panels.

Worked like a champ! My wife used to work for a FastSigns, and we still talk with the owner and some of the employees who are still working there. Knowing them turned out to be a serious win, as they cut out the striping for me, as well as the scoop lettering. I knew they would handle it easily, thanks guys!

With design and striping finalised, I hit the hardware - oh man, the hardware. I needed a bib! I had never worked with components like this! All of my past purchases had been very much of the "budget gamer" variety, and as such, well, I just did not upgrade that often! I set up a ghetto test bench in my garage and pieced the parts together to ensure that everything booted, worked and did not flame out! ;) I was almost like a kid at a toy store... I was just in awe of what I was looking at and tasked with! But "awe" does not equal "fear", and I dove in to the pile of parts and started putting the heart of the Boss together!

The motherboard and the CPU came together.

Slap on the CoolerMaster Hyper48 HSF unit. Can't turn over the motor without having a good source of power, and CoolerMaster gave me a good triple rail "fuel system"!

This is nearly phallic when you start talking about inserting these "sprung" video cards into PCI-e slots... but to a hardware geek like me, it almost turned me on!

It all booted up and worked properly!