It's a Hard Mod life...

I recently replaced my ancient Leadtek 6600gt 128MB with a more current Leadtek 7900GT 256MB with more pipeage, frameage and pwanage! Here's the workhorse:



The 7900GT is basically an under-volted, and hence underclocked, version of the 7900GTX, with a cost delta of about Rs.12,000. The GTX's core/processor is run at the rated voltage of 1.4v, while the GT is run at 1.2v. Even the Samsung memory chips are underclocked here at 1.8V from the default 2.12V in the GTX. Now, if only I can increase the core and memory voltage by 0.2V (or more), I can "stick it to the man" and overclock my relatively cheap GT to GTX speeds (and beyond) for cheap! And thus began my journey into hard mods, which here it's specifically called a "volt-mod". This is not a tutorial for volt-modding your 7900gt, however, since there are quite a lot of that out there.

Anyways, soon after the hard launch of the 7900GTs, many different mods for increasing the core and memory voltages came out. Almost all of them came out on xtremesystems.org. The mods ranged from easy(connect dots with conductive ink pen) to n00b-killer higher-volt volt mods (replace resitors with variable resistors and solder-in connections). I chose the easy mod partly because of not wanting to push my beginner's luck too much, and partly because I don't have a good third party cooler. That conductive ink pen was nowhere to be found around my area. I could've went over to the electronics center of my city, the Ritchie street, coz I heard it through the grapevine that it could be available there, but I was too lazy to plan a trip there.

So I settled to buying soldering equipment locally. Now, I've owned a soldering iron before, about 5 years ago I think, but I don't remember using it more than once, unsuccessfully, before it went kaput and I had to throw it away. With such soldering talent, I thought it would be wise to wisen-up before I burnt my house down. So I took the family's TV remote (at night when everyone was sleeping, of course) and tried soldering test pieces of wires onto the components and then de-soldering them. This was also the first time I had held and learnt to use a DMM, Digital Multi-Meter. After reading a few articles on soldering and DMMs, I can say that I can do some basic solder mods with some confidence.

Tools of the trade: The buying power of Rs.280


Here's the 1.55 volt mod I did. I have a closer-up version but it looks like a -20 myopic's view of the night sky: (yea, I know, try to buy a real camera)



Make no mistake, these "solder pads" are tiny and soldering these things can be very tricky without a soldering rod that is thinner, sharper and more suited to electronics solder. I couldn't buy one so, before modding the video card, I tried modding the soldering rod itself. First, I tried to the brute force method of making the rod thinner, i.e., filing. Having no proper file, it was getting tedious to remove any amount of copper off the rod. So next I just took a stiff bit of bare copper wire and wrapped it around the rod a couple of times, leaving a small piece of copper jutting out. The way I used this copper wire is like this: first I melted some solder on the main copper nose and sort of splattered the tin onto a heavily taped area on my table. Then I looked for a tiny enough globule of tin that can be remelted by the copper strand, and then used the copper wire as soldering rod tip. The reson for splattering hot solder and then using that instead of using the solder directly from the spool is, the copper wire won't have enough heat to melt such a large diameter of solder wire.

This method was quickly becoming slow, painful and messy (to say the least), so I wound up doing all the solders without the copper wire mod. Anyway, here's the glorious copper wire mod simple mod, which can, almost, be seen below :



Personally, I would recommend you to wait and get some silver paint or a conductive pen to perform this mod. If you do choose to solder mod your card instead, get to know the proper usage of the soldering gun and the DMM before you even switch them on. I had many close calls and nearly blew my card. Also, try to buy as many implements as you can that would help you solder better. For example, magnifying glass, tweezers, desoldering braid, gloves, etc. Here's some tutorials to prep you up: SMD soldering[sparkfun.com] & Modding & DMM[madshrimps.be].

Finally, onto the mod itself. Let me put what I know about the mod simply. The new gpu has a set of Voltage ID (VID) lines which carries the code for the voltage to be supplied from a sortof voltage table. The vmod changes the VID by connecting some of the VID lines to one of the ground points (to produce logical '0'). This makes the VID point to another voltage in the voltage table. From what I understand, in older video cards, modding relied on changing the electrical properties of the traces/SMDs themselves to transmit a higher voltage. The current type of mod is a major improvement over those kind of mods. Anyways, below are the two major places on the PCB to mod:


The first 'opcion' (spanish, I guess) in the first picture is the easiest to do, followed by 'opcion 2' and then the third mod (the second picture). First, I did the first mod but now I am with the second mod. I'll say the reason for jumping mods a little farther down. The scales involved in the third mod are just a tad tiny for me to solder properly. Not that I didn't try though. But it's too small for even my 'ghetto copper wire mod'. Next time, I am going to buy a magnifying glass and try to clean up the mod.

To over-volt the memory, there's a so-called "pencil mod". A pencil mod is done by shading the top of a resistor element using an ordinary lead pencil. Lead in the pencil is a pretty good conductor and acts as an alternative path, effectively reducing the resistance of the element. The DMM comes in pretty handy here to know if you've shaded enough or if you need to erase a few lines to get to the target resistance.

I didn't even bench the card at stock. I directly went and did the 1.4v mod and the 'pencil mod' for the memory chips, and hit 630 core and 784mem (Stock 450 core, 660 mem). Since I don't have a third party cooling solution for my video card, I didn't know how much excess heat the stock coolers can dissipate once over-volted. The temps were in the vicinity of some high 80s. Then I did the 1.5v mod after making sure the video card's not melted and was able to go upto 680/900.

The peak temperature now was peeking at 100°C! Most people I know would've suffered some sort of massive attack if it were their card. But I kept this setup for a few days and then resoldered the card back to a bit more cooler 1.35v. But the OC was pathetic.

So I went and got myself 4 80mm fans to better ventilate my cabinet. This is a cheaper alternative to getting a video card cooler. Cost me about Rs.200 and my cabinet now has a total of about 7 fans all strategically placed (cross fingers). My lowly CPU cabinet, which doesn't even deserve to be named (it's a Zebronics Elegance. See?), didn't come with too many fan holes to begin with. But it has two extra holes now thanks to an old screwdriver and a good hammer hand. There was another problem that I failed to see; there's no place to screw-in the fans! That's when i came across double-sided foam. Great stuff this. I bought quite a few rolls of this thing after I saw how good it held. Now I've got four fans stuck-on rather than screwed in. I think the foam also dampens most of the vibration because you won't be able to tell by hearing that about seven 80mm fans are coursing air through my case even when you stand right next to it. I've set them up as 3 intakes and 3 exhausts. The 7th fan blows air across the video card's cooler. The air flow is further controlled by chart paper cutouts which are, you guessed it, strategically placed. I even made a cpu shroud out of chart paper.



Notice the two newly fangled holes? The top hole, as you can see is covered by an exhausting fan and the one on the bottom right is used as an intake hole by a fan inside the case. I had an old epson printer paper tray like thing made of plastic. I took it off in this photo to show the fan inside but I kinda stick it on the fan to keep things from falling into it.

Notice the chart paper shroud-like covering on the bottom-left fan? That is to keep the exhaust from "polluting" the two intake fans next to it:

Feel like throwing up? It doesn't look this bad in person, believe me. The main thing to notice here is the CPU shroud, the video card shroud (below) and the intake fan stuck onto the side of the hard disks.

And here's the ghetto "cpu shroud". This is designed so that the cpu gets completely fresh air directly from the outside via the top side fan. This is so because the cpu cooler is surrounded by exhaust fans (the rear 80mm exhaust fan and the SMPS 120mm exhaust fan).



Right now, my cabinet is a mess. Ok, messier than before. Here's some internal shots:

A sound cooling, this. Yep, that's two fans stuck on the back side of a Creative Live! sound card. Crazy, but my case is not very roomy. The video card shroud is, again, ghetto style.


Here's a view inside the shroud. Double sided foam tape FTMFW!



Notice the tiny loop of red wire on top of the card? That's my old 0.2v volt mod. In my recent mods, I use only a single strand of copper wire when connecting farther solder points (solder doesn't stick to pcb, only to metal). The reason is that, as I found out the heart-stopping way, the copper wire can leverage enough stress onto the solder point on that PCB that it could pry it off along with a strand of the silver trace connected to it! Remember the three mods? Fortunately for me, only the first mod will not work now.

So, I went and did the second mod. Of course, it meant a lot of desoldering and resoldering, which comes with it's own ton of risks, but hey, you learn. So, I guess that's it on my first hard mod. Presently, I am sticking with the 1.5v vmod and the temps are 60°C idle and 83°C load. Bless the approaching winter season, my temperatures presently are 56°C idle and 80°C load. I can only hope the temps will reduce a bit more. Cold climates are always welcome in Chennai. For a more long term cooling, I am currently looking for a very good video card cooler to buy. Like, at least a Zalman VF900cu. But they don't seem to be available in India. There's probably a few available for second hand purchase from an uber geek that's planning for next upgrade since yesterday. And, hopefully, I can get a good deal on it. Perhaps not in India.

BASSic fun

My computer desk doesn't really favour anything more than a 2.1 speaker configuration. So when I wanted to dump my sorry sounding Philips Smart Sound LC 2.1 speaker unit, I searched for another 2.1 speaker that was in the right price-to-performance sweet spot. This time, I didn't want to end up with another LC2.1 sound-alike, which turned out to be cheap both in price and quality. But I am over it now and my brand spanking new Altec Lansing ATP3 is monetarily cheaper and aurally dear.

My pre-shopping research made a strong case for this speaker, and it very much lives up to it's fame. I mean, the bass is always in-your-face with no artifacts at all volumes. Oh yeah, let's talk about the bass. Due to my room's terrain and my desktop's oppulence, the only place to keep my speaker system is on my computer desk. The best place to keep a down-firing sub like mine is against a wall. But placing it on my desk has it's own thrills. Anytime a deep drum sounds, I can feel my desk vibrating as if it were the one that was hit. The effect is spectacular in games and in hiphop music, especially.
AFAIK, subwoofers are pretty much unshielded and so must be kept away from other electronics. But this is the first subwoofer I've had that distorts the monitor's display noticeably with every bass note. The effect is annoying, of course, and I am appraising a suitable location to relocate the sub. The ATP3's specified frequency range is only 45Hz to 18KHz, which was surprising considering the response. So, one day, I set out to find just how the subwoofer does great bass without touching the 18Hz to 43Hz spectrum. I downloaded a few tone generators and quickly liked playing with NCH Tone generator.

Using the tone generator introduced me to an absolutely unexpected and mind-blowing experience with deep bass. It totally changed my appreciation for the speaker as well. After stepping through the numbers, I found the following "sweet spots" in the speaker's response. NB, I didn't test extensively, rather just stepped through at the program' spinbox's granularity.
88.10 Hz
93.34 Hz
117.60 Hz
124.59 Hz

Though not near the infrasonic range, these frequency spots shook the room pretty good. My favourite was the 124ish Hertz. At this frequency, the ATP3 seemingly produces the most bass output. The subwoofer and the mid-range drives started behaving like goddamn leaf-blowers, pumping a continous stream of air. At first I couldn't up the volume above three-fourth at this frequency because there were all sorts of whirring sounds, apparently, coming from all around me. That was the first time I discovered how many loose objects were on my desk and around my room as well. Loose changes and small boxes were the first ones to rain down on my desk from the subwoofer's perch. A stationery holder (full of stationeries) and the subwoofer of my old LC 2.1 system started moving fluently along the desk. The glass windows and a light-weight, free-standing dressing table were the source of the whirring sounds. After securing them down I was able to up the volume still more.
But not completely though as harmonic distorsions become too evident. But even then the effects of the bass was pretty exciting. I brought water filled vessels into my room to observe ripples of varying amplitude with varying frequencies. That was when i noticed something more cool.

I remembered an episode of MythBusters where Adam Savage tested the myth of the Brown Note. The myth says that there is a subsonic frequency between 5 and 10Hz at which any listener supposedly involuntarily loses control of his sphincter. Or, in other words, the hapless audience shat their pants. They found no such note, at least in the three frequencies they tested (IIRC, 5, 7 & 9 Hz). My guess is that an infrasonic laxative note is quite plausible knowing the dangerous effects of the lower hertzes. Different intensities of infrasounds can knock down buildings, liquefy any animal's organs in a second, simulate an earthquake, travel around the world seven times over and can can mess up the mind, all 'without a sound'. I can understand why we can't hear ultra-sonic sounds (our middle-ear is a sort-of low-pass filter), but I always wondered how we can hear 20Hz but not 17 Hz. Maybe, at sub-17Hz, we only "hear" (or, "feel") the individual beats.
Anyways, coming back to the topic, my plan wasn't to inadvertently stain my long johns, however. In the episode, when Adam Savage, surrounded by arrays of subwoofer spitting low hertzes, tried to speak, his voice came out on-and-off, coinciding with the frequency they were working. That was due to the rhythmic compression and rarefaction of his lungs by the massive wall of air being moved by the insane SPL audio drives.

What surprised me was that I was able to do the same thing with my stock ATP3 subwoofer!

It was great fun to talk normally but end up sounding like a robot on a vibrating spaceship. Of course, with only 103dB SPL, the ATP3 isn't the 60 inch subwoofer and definetly not qualified for no SPL competitions. Ergo, I have to stay within about a half a meter of the sub woofer to pull this trick. But the bass's bewitchment burns brighter and compels me to buy a bigger custom woofer unit. I wanted to know how low a frequency a sub can produce (not reproduce, as I believe most audio formats don't store them in the first place) and came upon "the buttkicker". The ultimate way to experience bass is, supposedly, up yours. The device attaches to the bottom of a seat or a couch and transmits bass efficiently through the solid medium directly to the "recipient". I only wish someone would buy this for my birthday or something.

So, try the little sinsoidal experiment and see if you can't experience the primal bass response of your subwoofers too. And, of course, here's an obligatory note: Any damage to your equipment or to you or to your neighour's cat from trying out anything I said, is your own fault. The tool suggested here puts your speaker unit to a sustained high power output mode and hence should not be used for more than a few moment at a time, with the definition of "few moment" being left for your common sense to figure.

Here's a snapshot of my desktop showing the location of the ATP3, if you can find it among the junk, that is :)
Image taken on my father's nokia 6255 (I think).

Spine Yoga?

I often have dreams that I can remember vividly for a week or two. I started a personal "dream blog" to journal my night time woolgatherings, but I had long since put that idea under wraps. I journaled one of my dreams but mozilla was kind enough to crash before sending the data to blogger and I wasn't going to write everything from scratch. But it was too hard to keep the post reader-friendly too because I had to introduce many familiar and unfamiliar persons to the reader, explain the flow of the dream's (il-)logical flow, explain the dozens of scenarios/scenes, explain the significance and familiarity of a particular person/object/situation or other non-tangible concept in my past and just plain forgetting some link in the dreams's flow. So, I'll try to be very specific, and very generic, where need be.

I remember all of the dream now having reviewed it a couple of times in my head. But the wierd part was when I was in my friend's house (Hey Anand Shankar!) and I saw his family friends and relatives chilling out and doing various stuff. One group of older male relatives were watching something on TV. It looked like a fully interactive and personal yoga training video. I watched the introduction by two long-braided, saffron wearing yoga teachers explaining yoga and it's benefits. Though looking like saints, they talked like the usual suspects at any telemarketing show.

I don't quite remember the speech but their was leading to something called "Spine Yoga". I think they were on about how it's a new form of yoga and how it can cure back problems. The audience became interested now as if anticipating. Then the guys on tv asked the listeners to place the "sensor" on their head. One of the men sitting before the tv (who, incidently, had a half-shaven head, much like a 'brahman') placed a small, black and squat-cylindrical sized device with a wire training behind it and to the tv, on his head in a particular spot. The sensor thing didn't fall off which could be because of adhesive or suction with the man's shaven head (guess my brain just didn't think up of any reason). Anyway, the man on tv seemed to know that the sensor had been placed correctly on someone's head for he proceeded to show how to sit down properly for the yoga.

This is where I was pretty intrigued. The man on tv, in live video, asked the 'user' to do various things like straighten his neck a bit more, straighten his back slightly, etc. I was pretty amazed how one sensor (presumably a gyroscope) was able to detect spinal curvature in addition to the neck's attitude. That's when I noticed that a video camera was also feeding the tv (I am pretty sure the camera wasn't there the first time I saw the tv. My brain must've made it up when I questioned the sensor's ability). I watched a few minutes of the video while they explained the need for the slight curvature of the spine (?). Then, as appropriate to a dream, the video was concluding with the marketers saying encouraging words about Spine Yoga.

My dream didn't end there of course (I remember that I was looking at my friend's new computer, later talking to him as he arrived in his home, leaving the house and stuff). But the Video camera + Gyroscopic sensor utilizing technology I experienced stayed fresh in my mind even after I've woken up. I was pretty sure I couldn't've made the term "Spine Yoga" up that, as soon as I got up, I switched on the monitor and googled for the term! But Spine yoga doesn't seem to be a defined word, as far as i can search at least. As for the interactive video technology, it's probably my brain's extension of the Eye-toy technology, only instead of a sword or a gun shaped sensor, there was a head-mounted sensor. And then there's the video with real live characters instead of a game engine generated ones. Probably many pre-recorded clips for every scenarios possible.

Whatever. That's that.

I don't know if I talk or laugh in my sleep, but sometimes I wake up with the wierd feeling that I did. I remember another dream, (don't worry, I'll keep this one short) where I was listenening to a lecture of sorts (I mean, it was out in the fields. Under a tree. With two or three students? Next to a railway station? go figure!). The lecturing guy was just about finished and he turned to leave with a lingering statement. All was quiet and peaceful and soft. This was where I mulled over the statement and spoke up. I remembered every word I said a few days ago, but now the words escape my mind. But I remember, as I finished my talk, everyone's head in the field(?) turned towards me and looked at me with slight puzzlement in their eyes. I then slowly sank down and woke up brightly.
Again, I had the strange feeling that I had actally vocalised what I said in my dream. I wish I could've written this when I remembered what it was that I said. So, I've decided that when I buy a video camera or a web-camea, I'll record my slumbering self, just to establish whether or not. It won't accomplish much. Or anything, for that matter, except to tell me if I am a somnavocalist (or is that somnaoralist? somnarhetorican? I don't think there's a word for it, but you get the idea), but it just might be the weirdest clip of the day if it ever leaks into the net.

Are these for ever?

It's tough to come up with a interesting-yet-goofy-sounding name when you are going to talk about bling blings. Ask my mom on how I dislike being encumbered with even the tiniest loop of gold or silver. Though I've favoured wearing a couple "interesting" looking stuff like that copper snake ring and that cool LED-flashing ring sold at an exhibition when I was considerably younger, I just am not comfortable wearing something to make a "status statement". I am not quite sure jewels look at home on a man.

The feeling's entirely personal of course. I do appreciate a beautiful and elegant piece enhancing an elegant maid's beauty subtly. So when I was searching for a topic for my brief spell of recreational modeling, I chose diamonds.


Now I have done a few jewellery designs in the past too. But they were pretty botched up things and not quite satifactorily done. Here are a few of them:

This one I call "Chained Heart" and was the artifact of my foray into 3D goldsmithing. It was quite interesting to make since it was my first experience with creating a chain with the Spacing tool and rendering highly reflective scene.

I call this, quite obviously, "Crowned". The model is a Poser 6.0 character imported into 3D studio max to bear the horrible gold and ruby (?) crown. This scene wasn't about the crown. I posed the king(!) in a menacing pose pointing a finger (relax, it's the index) at someone. Unfortunately, I am not very good at clothing and hairdressing in Poser 6, so the scene is a bit, er, bare and I left it, er, hanging, at least for now.

Spiral ringlet prototype. This one gave me quite a bit of headache, probably because I suck at geometry and elctronics. It has 3 sine waves inter-twined in such a way that when given a gradient thickness and bent 180 degrees along the y-axis, the ensemble shouldn't intersect anywhere. Needless to say, mine intersects.

About a week ago, I found reference pictures of a diamond cut called "Simple brilliance" cut. It looked simple enough to model and it was. Finding the right maerial for the diamond model was easy enough as well since there are a lot of tutorials on material making. So, at last, I had me a diamantine in my virtual hands.



With the stone ready, I could finally make me some simple rings. I did a quick google for simple diamond rings to loosely base my deigns on. I haven't started any complex ring designs yet. So, here are the simple ones:
Simple diamond ring:


Aqua toe ring:


Coppermine diamond ring:


Goldmine diamond ring (Yeah, I suck at naming things). Note the "To my beloved" engraving too:


Goldmine in a box:


Goldmine in a box, closeup:



More later.


[Later..]
Here's two more for now. Both designs were (unwilling) courtesy of boldingold.com

Golden Helix:


Tension set ring:

Are you Nina from Carolina?

I never really liked TV serials which is mostly because I don't watch TV. Somehow somewhere along the way, I stopped watching all TV programs Tamil. Maybe it was all the cheap serials and movies that I chanced upon while fascinated by Discovery and Cartoon channels in English.

But all this was when I used to watch TV. But recently, just to while away a few days of boredom, I got all 9 season DVDs (or, dvd-rips) of Southpark. It seemed an inexhaustible source of entertainment. But, it did exhaust and so I started researching for the top rated shows on Tv. Thus I started and obtained all seasons of Smallville (Kill Lana Lang. Please!), Lost, MythBusters, Prison Break, Simpsons and, recently, 24 (Die Kim Bauer, die. And I'm not talking German).

Now that we've gotten all that over with, we can come to the topic. In one of the '24' episodes, Bouer says "niner" when reading out a number. Now, I've heard niner being used before and I assumed that agency guys used it to be as clear in spite of pronunciation differences on the phone(it would be an under statement to say that they use phones too much on the show), but I wanted to see if other cardinals had such different ways of saying them.

It seems that 'niner' belongs to the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, or Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. The familiar Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and other designations are also a subset of this alphabet. Only 3, 5 and 9 have different pronunciations ("tree", "fife", and "niner") but all the numbers have a code word to it too. [link]

Nadazero	NAH-DAH-ZAY-ROH
Unaone	OO-NAH-WUN
Bissotwo	BEES-SOH-TOO
Terrathree	TAY-RAH-TREE
Kartefour	KAR-TAY-FOWER
Pantafive	PAN-TAH-FIVE
Soxisix	SOK-SEE-SIX
Setteseven	SAY-TAY-SEVEN
Oktoeight	OK-TOH-AIT
Novenine	NO-VAY-NINER

Finally, I fired up my trusty WordWeb dictionary and typed in a cardinal. It seems that it's not just the agencies that use different words for numbers. Each number has quite a few familiar as well as a few quirky synonyms to it. I've left out the very obvious ones in an attempt to make this at least a bit interesting.

1	Ane, Ace
2	Deuce
3	Deuce-ace, leash, tercet, ternion, terzetto, tierce, trey, trine, troika
4	foursome, Little Joe, quatern, quaternity, tetrad
5	Cinque, fin, Little Phoebe, Phoebe, Pentad, quint, quintet
6	Captain Hicks, Hexad, seset, sextet, sise, sixer
7	septet, sevener, heptad
8	Eighter from Decataur, Octad, Octonary, Ogdoad
9	Nina from Carolina, Niner, Ennead

A casual google didn't reveal much on the origins on some of the interesting sounding words. But some of the synonyms seem to be a homophonic play on the number's pronunciation, like Captain Hicks (hicks->six) and Nina from Carolina (nina->nine). I can see quite a few french derived words too, like Ane (french='un'), trey (french='trois'), Cinque (french='cinq') and sise (french='six' pronounced 'seese'). Since I am not in touch with the english speaking world, some or most of the mentioned words may be in contemporary use and I probably guessed the origins wrongly too. Do comment.

Trepidating Trepanations

In one of my usual stupors, I was imagining a thriller like plot which went like this:

<plot>
Our main character is a stereotypical middle-aged doctor with amateur interests in subjects likeTrepanation alternative medicine, ancient healing, cults, etc. Today, he is responding to a trauma emergency. Even from afar, the good doctor immediately recognizes the case at hand. His medical friends from various hospitals from all over the city have described this bizzare case to him: In the middle of the day, a man, or rarely, a woman, with a shaven head and a bloody spot on the top of his head will be rushed in. What's more bizzare was that, on the bloody spot , or the "Holey-C" as his friends had nicknamed it, was a 'C' shaped incision on the scalp that's been sutured shut. The doctors had found that there was a circular piece of skull bone "missing", as in "removed", underneath the Holey-C. What's more bizzare was that the victims were consious not only when they arrived at the hospital but also were reportedly kept consicous by the perpetrators as they ground away his skull bone.

The victims describe being jumped on by a gang of seemingly old men in business suit at around noon. The perps, having bound and gaged the victims, had clamped a bench vice onto a desk and clamped their victim's head on it. After shaving the head and applying a local anesthetic, they had scalpelled off a piece of the scalp to make the C-shaped hole and then used what sounded like a dremel to remove the skull bone piece. Then they saw bright lights being used on their skull bones.
All the doctors were well aware of the procedure performed on the victims. The question was 'by whom' and 'what ever the hell for'. It was 'Trepanation', supposedly one of the earliest surgical procedure performed by man. It's still performed on rare occasions, and only as a last resort, on head trauma patients to relieve of cranium pressure on the brain. There are early accounts of trepanation done on normal healthy adults too. It was either done by shamans to dispel evil spirits from the head, or by an eccentric few to open a "third-eye" to gain a sort of everlasting high.

The Good Doctor (GD) knew the latter kind of people only too well. Almost a decade ago, when he had just started work in this hospital, an unconscious young man was admitted by his girl friend. The young lady was apparently trepaning her lover at home which is, surprisingly, a quite common occurance since doctors refuse to trepan anyone not in need of one. The team of doctors were surprised he was still alive considering how close the 'trepan' had come to his brain. The GD was thinking how ironic it was that the brain cannot feel pain, cold or any other sensation even though it is the seat of all sensations. Pain, as is said, is a necessary evil. It sets our priorities right. For example, when you sip on a glass of very hot coffee, it is pain that tells you not to burn your tongue cells in your hurry to drink the coffee. So, in the absence of pain sensing nerves on the brain, there's no way of telling when, for example, a trepan is cutting the brain cells or just the meninges. You will become aware of any damage to the brain only after sufficient damage was done to induce visible changes like unconciousness, stroke or coma. Obviously, nature didn't anticipate that any animal would, in its right mind, find the fun in putting a chink in their brain's armor. The doctors fixed the guy up but, as they say, there's one born every minute.

Our GD later on has the hunch that the "bright light" described by the victims was some ultra compact strong source of a focussed radiation to make sure that the skull bone doesn't fuse/grow with any replacement skull piece the doctors are sure to try to introduce into the "third eye". The hole supposedly helps displace the Cerebrospinal fluid, the brain nourishing fluid, from the brain ventricles and replace it with plain old blood. This is called restoring the "brain blood volume". Protagonists claim that it makes them feel "young at heart" again, cures depression, betters their awareness of their surroundings (hence "third eye"), brings back creativity and all things gay. It is not scientifically proved that trepanation does what it's claimed to do or if it's just a placebo.

The GD's knowledge of trepanation includes knowing that some protagonists of the "third eye" think that the doctors are part of a world wide conspiracy to deny people of their own "third-eye". Following some trails, the GD was able to pick up the fact that all the victims were either child prodigies or not-so-renown artists who have lost their heyday. The hi-tech cult seems hell-bent on proving trepanation's effectivness and proving the medical world wrong. The GD does some more sleuting and exposes the cult. End of story.
</plot>


Feel free to run with the story on your own. Do try to send me a copy if you do :)
Some trepanation links:
Mother of All Holeys (MOAH)[link]
People with Holes in ther Heads [link]
An article on trepanation (Plot character inpired from this one)[link]