Modding doesn't always go as planned

Worklog: Not one, but two failed modding attempts!

Modding has enjoyed a pretty darn loyal cult following for many years; namely because it's generally butt-kickingly awesome, but also because it can be a great way of reusing old stuff you've got lying around. In our hands, it can go terribly, terribly wrong.

The plan was relatively simple: grab a dualcore Atom board with NVIDIA's ION chip, a couple of 2.5" lappy harddrives, a teensy-tiny power supply and throw it all into a pre-existing case. We got in touch with Zotac and grabbed their ION ITX-F mobo, particularly handy thanks to the onboard wireless-n card, and started to look for inspiration.

It was found in the now-ancient Nintendo 64 console, a system that had sucked countless hours of life away and one that - we thought - would fit the board in. Now, Nintendo are pretty crafty and notorious for their security screws (maddening little domes with non-standard grooves in them), but thankfully we found a solution.

The answer came from modders extraordinaire Will O'Brien and Ben Heckendorn, who explain how to take a standard biro pen (the clear ones that you can buy from Officeworks or practically any office supply store on the planet), melt the end of it and press it against the screw to make your own handy tool on the cheap.

So with a pen and lighter in hand, we melted the end of the pen and pressed it against the screw - hey presto, it worked! A downside of this method, of course, is the ungodly chemical smoke that pours out of the pen if it's on fire for longer than about three milliseconds, so we'd recommend doing it outside.

But ultimately it did get us into the screws, and a few of them actually came out without too much work. The rest, though, felt like they'd been installed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in a hissy fit, and promptly shredded the pen/screwdriver's tiny malleable teeth.

Our amazing pen tool, shredded to bits.

So we relit the pen, and attempted another moulding. Lit on fire? Check. Stuck in the hole on the bottom of the N64? Check. Wait the same fifteen seconds for it to cool? Check. Pull the entire pen out intact? Well......not really. A chunk of it decided to wrench itself free from the main shaft, and promptly lodge itself in the hole, around the screw.

Smart people out there would point out that we should probably call it a day, but we were determined to get this damn thing open...