My Motto - Build it while you can!

Last Update: December 19th, 2011



History of Big Al's Computers

Welcome to my site. I am Big Al and my hobby is case modding. I've been doing this since I built my first computer back in 2000. Previous to that I owned several "normal" computers, starting with an Osborne Executive in 1983, and then a few Pentium computers by Packard Bell and Compaq. Case modding, if you've never tried it, is a blast. The basic steps aren't all that difficult, but when you take case modding to the next level it will become a big deal. I'm somewhere in-between those levels, and what I have on display below depicts my handiwork, from my most popular "Semper Fidelis" project to the original "Globe of Retribution" machine.


Big Al himself (that would be me of course) has been more focused on motorcycles since 2005 when he bought his first Harley-Davidson (Fatboy), so most computer activities are associated with just keeping the current set of machines runnning. There have been some new builds of course, but most of the money goes to the bikes - I didn't mention that I got a chopper in 2009, did I? Two motorcycles means twice as many rides you know. Anyway, computer maintenance can be tough sometimes. Osborn-Again had been experiencing hard drive problems (turned out to be a bad SATA cable); I ended up eventually rebuilding the whole machine into an AMD Quad-core / Nvidia 560 gaming machine just to play Duke Nukem Forever - now I call it Osborn-Again-2. The Chopper machine got stuck in a reboot cycle in July 2010 and this wasn't fixed until the Windows Vista CD was used to repair the install. When you build so many machines and try to keep 8 of them operational, you need to plan for system maintenance. Also, a lack of funds to build new machines means that the old machines must continue to function so we can have LAN parites periodically. We don't always document the parties but we'll continue to take pictures for the major ones. Thanks for stopping by.

To help out my friends and to support the community, I have done reviews on products and services offered to consumers, mostly via the Internet.

You can find most of my reviews at FastLaneHW and Velocity Reviews.

If you need to contact me, please send an e-mail to: scummins@cox.net


Big Al's "How to" Mod Articles and Product Reviews:

Custom Logo Mod

Antec VCool Device Product Review

MGE XG Ninja2 Case Review

Hyperkore Laser-Etched Window Review

Cooler Master AeroGate 1 Review

HyperKore HK-Xtreme Gaming System Review

Corepad Mouse Products Review


Download Big Al's screen savers:

Custom Motorcycles 2008 (exe) Custom Motorcycles 2008 (zip) MountainFest 2008 (exe) MountainFest 2008 (zip)

Ride of the Patriots 2008 (exe) Ride of the Patriots 2008 (zip) MountainFest 2007 (exe) MountainFest 2007 (zip)

Ride of the Patriots - Rolling Thunder 2007 (exe) Ride of the Patriots - Rolling Thunder 2007 (zipped)

Ride of the Patriots - Rolling Thunder 2006 (exe) Ride of the Patriots - Rolling Thunder 2006 (zipped)

U.S. Botanic Gardens "Orchids in an Art Deco Garden (exe)" U. S. Botanic Gardens "Orchids in an Art Deco Garden (zipped)"

Philadelphia Flower Show (exe) Philadelphia Flower Show (zipped)


Friends of Big Al's Computers:

Infinity Customs Think Computers Fast Lane Hardware Velocity Reviews Pro-Clockers The Mod Nation


Big Al's Computers Gaming and Contest Events



December 2011 Call of Duty 4 LAN Party

On the same day that Curio Cavern was hosting their PC Tourney to win a Big Al's Computer, there was also a Call of Duty 4 LAN party going on at Big Al's Computers. The timing wasn't good for several players however as finals were the following week so studying took priority over gaming. None the less, gaming was done and four gamers were in attendance for the event. For 2012, look for more LAN parties but hopefully scheduled without conflict of school duties!





September 2011 Call of Duty 4 LAN Party

A relaxing Labor Day Weekend was off to a good start when Big Al's Computers hosted a Call of Duty 4 LAN party! We had five gamers at this event; several of the usual crowd were either working (Curio Cavern is a popular work location for Tom and Chris, since Tom and Tinah own the store) or doing Dungeons & Dragons. I know what you're thinking - Dungeons and Dragons over computer gaming at Big Al's Computers? Anyway, the evening was full of good times. We did a chicken barbecue with roasted potatoes; a rice dish and salad rounded out the dinner. There were plenty of snacks and soda too. There were seven gaming machines available for the event, three on the main level (in the den) and four in the basement, which was enhanced with green neon lighting. Be sure to watch for our next LAN party - we notify friends via Facebook.






May 2011 "Win a PC Tourney" at Curio Cavern

Big Al's Computers participated in the Curio Cavern "Win a PC Tourney" event on 21 May 2011. A real Big Al's Computer was the grand prize and guess who one after several rounds of Magic card playing? Chris Barrett is the lucky guy! Keep an eye open for a another Big Al's Computer prize before the end of 2011. Who knows, you might be the lucky winner next time.




Chris caught in the act of gaming


Holiday Gaming on December 27th 2009

We started at noon and in total we had eight gamers with seven gaming machines running on the wired network. While most of the gamers had to leave in the evening ('cause they gotta work), a few gamers plan to stay here for the long haul - into the wee hours of Monday morning. As usual Sandra prepared some tasty food, Allen grilled some hot dogs, and a few gamers (like Greg) brought over a snack item for the enjoyment of all.






June 27th 2009 Gaming - Largest Turnout Yet!

The summer is meant for gaming and that's what we like to do at Big Al's Computers. There are 8 machines on our wired LAN and for this event we had 10 gamers ready to rock and roll. So a few gamers had to watch as others played their hearts out with the goal of total domination of the others. Lots of fun really. Anyway, there were lots of snacks, drinks and barbecue chicken / corn on the cob / potato salad to keep our energy up way into the late night hours - would you believe it didn't end until 0700 the following day?

Now we did have one minor problem. We tripped a circuit breaker on one of the circuits supplying juice to the machines in the basement. The circuit can only handle 15 Amps but only half of the machines down there were on that circuit. We turned off a few lights and powered the machines back on with minimal downtime. Overall it's hard to say who came out on top, but if you look at the picture of Sharaz, he's showing a 7-kill streak in Call-of-Duty-4 - that's pretty good. Of course, he's on our newest machine, an AMD Phenom II Quad Core with an Radeon 4870 graphics card.











May 2009 Gaming - Call of Duty 4 on the basement LAN






November 2007 Gaming - Call of Duty 4 on the basement LAN



Big Al's Computers Machine Builds




Curio Cavern PC Tourney Prize Computer for December 2011

* Curio Cavern has been doing very well since they opened the doors in January 2011 (almost one year ago). Big Al's Computers is proud to supply a second prize computer for their late-fall Magic Tournament called "PC Tourney". The event was held on 17 Dec 2011 and after several hours of intense gaming, Patrick Cox was the winner of the machine. Speaking of which, this was an AMD Dual-Core rig with 2 GB of DDR2 RAM and a nVidia 8800GT graphics card. The components were housed in a Coolermaster Scout case and it even came with a 24 inch LCD display, wireless mouse and keyboard.


Patrick Cox is all smiles after winning his very own Big Al's Computer.






Fall 2011 Project: FX-8-Core "Mathmos Madness" Build

* Mathmos Madness was built as soon as AMD released the new FX Bulldozer CPU. In fact, I ordered the CPU the second I saw it was available - good thing too because it sold out within minutes! This new 8-core CPU is designed to clock higher (4 GHz is easily obtained) and boy is it fast. Some folks say it isn't much of an improvement over the previous 6-core CPUs but I am very happy with the increased performance over my previous AMD Quad-core. We'll see how this new machine performs on gaming nights with it's AMD Radeon 6950 graphics card and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM. The Mathmos name comes from the LED Mathmos light that I installed into the rear/top portion of an older Lian Li full tower case. I did a review on this case several years ago and now it has finally achieved success as my case of choice for this build.


Video clip of the Mathmos Light

















Summer 2011 Project: Scan-a-Tron Rebuild (Scan-a-Tron-2)

* The original 2006 Scan-a-Tron needed a rebuild because it was running so bloody slow, likely due to a compromised Windows XP operating system and just that fact that I've been using much faster AMD machines these past few years. So I set out looking for a faster laptop that I could gut and exchange for the old AMD Athlon XP HP laptop that was the original Scan-a-Tron. Tom offered up his old AMD eMachines M6805 laptop which runs an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU - this would be twice as fast and it had decent ATI (now owned by AMD) 9600 graphics built in too. So the project started and ended on Labor Day 2011. It took about nine hours to complete the dis-assembly of the eMachines M6805 laptop and to get it into the Scan-a-Tron chassis without breaking anything.






Spring 2011 Project: OsbornAgain Rebuild (OsbornAgain-2)

* OsbornAgain was showing it's age this past year, with a dying hard drive and a bad SATA cable too boot. The new Duke Nukem Forever game was finally coming out in July so I figured it was time to rebuild this machine into a powerful and modern gaming platform. I opted for the Nvidia GTX560 in the Duke Nukem Fully Loaded Package along with a tasty AMD Phenom II X4 975 CPU (running at 3.6 GHz without overclock). I needed a new motherboard, PSU and memory too so this was basically a complete rebuild. The results speak for themselves - gaming has reached a new level of coolness with this machine and my 28" LCD monitor. While I haven't finished the game yet, I am destined to reach the end before the year is out. OsbornAgain-2 was well worth the investment.





Spring 2009 Project: AMD Quad-Core Dual-GPU Gaming Machine "Chopper"

* AMD Quad-Core Gaming Machine has found it's theme. This machine is called "chopper" because I mounted a picture of my chopper (including a few Hooter Girls for good measure) on the backside of the motherboard. I started this project in early March 2009 and ordered the remaining big parts (motherboard, video card, etc.) on 14 March. I built this machine for powerful gaming but for now I started with just one video card, the Radeon 4870 with 1GB of memory on the card. The system is capable of cross-fire support, so in the summer of 2009 I added a second Radeon 4870 video card to run cross-fire. This is an awesome gaming machine now. It has the mother of all heatsinks, the Zalman 9900 - which is even bigger than the Zalman 9700. I have a 1 TB WD black edition hard drive. I have 2 optical DVD burners. I have a CoolerMaster case. There is 4 GB of DDR2 RAM so Windows Vista 64-bit edition has plenty to play with and of course I'm running the top of the line (at the time) AMD 940 Quad-Core Phenom II black edition. Overclocking is expected, naturally, but not until later when I feel I need more power. This machine is running most excellently right now at stock settings. Below are a few pictures of the assembly. Oh, the new monitor is a 25" LCD - is that big enough for gaming?











2008 Build: AVP Requiem Gaming Machine

* AVP Requiem is a movie-theme case that's based on the 2007 release of the Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem movie. This project was a 2007 holiday build that was mostly finished before the start of 2008 - the hardware was complete but the painting took a bit longer - as in 3-4 months longer! Check out some pictures below, and for more details, follow this Mod Nation forum link where I have my work log.







Old News: Gaming Power Upgrade for OsbornAgain

* OsbornAgain received a videocard infusion, gaining an eVGA Geforce 8800 GT Super Clock card after I extracted the older BFG 7800 GT Over Clock card. The new card fit easily into the PCI-e slot and now there is plenty of clearance between the VGA cooler and the nearby optical drive. Check out the pictures below.

* Scan-a-Tron has been included in CPU Magazine's Mad Reader Mod article in the October 2007 issue. Also, PC Magazine's on-line ExtremeTech Build It / Case Mod department has a custom review of Scan-a-Tron.



2007 "OsbornAgain Gaming Upgrade"




AMD Athon 64 X2 3800+, eVGA 8800 GT Super Clock and 2 GB of tasty DDR2 RAM



2007 Project"Semper Fidelis"









This project is almost complete; it's up and running with a mid-level videocard (MSI 8600 GTS OC). The case mods were built for a great Marine and good friend of our family - Lt. Col Greg Davis. The modded case was presented to him on his 50th birthday (late April 2007), and now we are awaiting final funding for either one or two videocards - perhaps one or two nVidia Geforce 8800 GTs. Money is tight, just like it is with the government due to the war effort. Stay tuned for updates this holiday season as Greg wants to have the machine completed before the year is over.


If you click on the link found in the title for this project, you will be taken to The Mod Nation forums, which is a very well respected forum site for computer modders like myself. You will be in the link for this project worklog, and there are plenty of additional pictures there to look at.



2006 Holiday Project "Scan-a-Tron"




Scan-a-Tron is fabricated from an HP ScanJet 6100C Scanner, an HP Pavilion ze4145 Laptop, and a custom Laser-Etched Window Made by Hyperkore Computers.

Scan-a-Tron has been included in CPU Magazine's Mad Reader Mod article in the October 2007 issue. You can also see Scan-a-Tron on ExtremeTech here!

Download the build history of Scan-a-Tron here.

2006 "Thermaltake Powerhouse"


AMD Athon FX62 (2.8Gz dual-core), dual eVGA 7900 GT's in SLI on an Asus Crosshair motherboard




2006 Small Projects



Upgrading bottom motherboard in "Printer-to-Computer-Deja-Vu" machine.




Vista Beta 2 Upgrade for the Printer-to-Computer




Color scheme change and some new parts for the Globe of Retribution




Laser-etched window in Sun X-Terminal keyboard






2005 Holiday Project "OsbornAgain"

OsbornAgain was developed from the original Osborne Executive CPM computer (circa 1983).

Velocity Reviews Forum link: here.

Big Al himself gets interviewed on 01-26-06 by Extreme Tech! Here's the link.

Download Extreme Tech's interview, without pictures here.





Major Projects 2004-2005

Sun X-Terminal Mod

Maximum PC Magazine Forum link: here.

Download the build history of the Sun X-Terminal Mod here.



Printer-to-Computer

Winner of Maximum PC "Rig of the Month" (ROTM) in February 2005 issue!

Download the build history of the printer-to-computer here.



Printer-to-Computer-Deja-Vu

Winner of PC Extreme magazine "Mod of the Month" in issue 26!

Winner of Bawl's Hot Mod "Out of the Box" contest in February 2005!

Download the build history of the printer-to-computer-deja-vu here.



Other Projects 2000-2003

Thanks for stopping by!