Mod of the Month - June 2007

NNC

By Tjedi AI
Worklog

"Curiouser and curiouser," as Alice would say. NNC really is a trip down the rabbit hole, with a mix of hard metal lines and bolts that turn the computer into half Tie Fighter, half chest of horrors. There's probably another half hidden in there somewhere, likely under the enormous side panel you will see in a minute.

Mods like this don't come around very often - NNC is beautifully executed, carefully designed and just plain over the top. I'd say that it had to borrow from [eurl=]BaDassumption[eurl], but I'm not sure it's possible to just borrow someone's slightly deranged insanity and perfect attention to detail.

The quite literally bucket of bolts that is NNC may be hard to categorize, but it's not hard to call a good mod. It's also been a long time in the making - Tjedi AI has been working on the project since 2004. There's something truly refreshing about this rather bizarre creation, though - almost no "pre-mod" parts have been used at all.

It all started with NNC's Tie Fighter cockpit-esque side panel. It wasn't built from bent aluminum L-channel...instead, Tjedi AI had to use smaller straight pieces, assembled with braces designed by hand and bolted together. On the underside, these homemade channels held several LEDs of three colours, each wired (rather messily at first) by hand.

Handles have, for most mods, become rather boring affairs. Slap a couple on and attempt to make them blend in as best you can, and you're good to go...right? Not on NNC. Tjedi AI accentuated his shiny creation by adding yet more bling in the form of small pieces of shined aluminum bolted together through the roof of the case. Though it looked quite strange in assembly, the end result fits beautifully.

The front panel of the case would receive the same unusual metal treatment as the top did. Much in the way that G-gnome's Orac³ made use of multiple layers of acrylic, Tjedi AI would make layers of aluminum. The end result is a cold, techno-pop creation that looks like it could be at home in Quake or Half-Life 2.

Nobody can say that Tjedi AI didn't do his own work for this mod. He even coloured his molex connectors himself by boiling them in fabric dyes and then giving them ice baths. When the system was wired up to run, he ran the newly tinted connectors behind the motherboard tray and cleaned up the wiring on both sides, giving NNC a nice and clean look on the interior that starkly contrasts the chaos on the outside.

Of course, what's a mod like this without feet? Not much...at least according to Tjedi AI. He painstakingly designed these feet out of the same aluminum strips used throughout the rest of the mod - hand built, bolted, and able to hold an elephant. The final system as it stands is impressive, to say the least - but he's not quite done yet.

There are actually many more great homebrew techniques in Tjedi AI's worklog. If you're tired of seeing the same old thing done with the latest and greatest new parts that make everyone forget how to do actual modding work, you owe it to yourself to check this one out. Old school never looked so new...