Overclocking a CPU today is about as exciting and risky as driving to the grocery store to pick up milk. Back in the 1990s though, overclocking or "speed-margining" was a black art and strictly verboten. But just what if you wanted to OC your Pentium or 486 a bit? Fortunately, boot breaks it down for you. 

In this week's blast from the internet past, we take a look at the 1996 perspective on online gaming. Anyone who's read a few of our Old School Monday features knows that we haven't always been right in our predictions, but this one was right on the mark when it predicted that the internet was the future of multiplayer gaming. 

Anyone paying attention in 1996 could have told you that internet gaming was a big deal for shooters and sims like Quake and Mechwarrior, of course, but we went a step further and called out the likes of the then-unreleased Meridian 59 and Ultima Online--titles that would pave the way for the entirety of massively multiplayer gaming.

And no, we can't explain why all those people are playing Quake with gamepads. Let's just chalk it up to it being the nineties and move on.

It's that time of year again - the sun is out, the days are warm and we've been up to our elbows in high-performance components for weeks. That's right, it's Dream Machine season and this year's build is one slick rig. In just seven days you'll get to set your eyes on one of the sweetest, sharpest, most powerful rigs to grace our pages and in order to start off our countdown week to Dream Machine 2011 we're going to go back to where it all began: the first Maximum PC Dream Machine.

Last year we reminisced about the very first Dream Machine ever (from a 1996 issue of boot), gave homage to the evolution of the Dream Machine, and checked on our predictions. This year we'll be sharing even more behind the scenes stories by telling you the parts and pieces that didn't make it into this years build, getting the Maximum PC staff to discuss their favorite Dream Machines, and we'll make predictions for Dream Machine 2015. We'll unveil this years rig next Monday, July 11th - and we also have some video footage of the making of the Dream Machine to follow. Stay tuned for all that - but first, take a moment to remember where it began: an Intel 400MHz Pentium II, 128MB SDRAM, a 56K modem, Alps Floppy Drive and a Tyan S1836DLUAN Thunder motherboard.

Remember POD? Remember gaming before MMX? No? Geez, noob brush up on your history a bit - you can start right here by reading our boot interview with Fabrice Valay from back in the day, which in this case means 1996. Hear about blistering fast 30 frames per second, the "French" touch, or reminisce about racing your cars to the safety of the escape ship.

Once a huge advantage for gamers, MMX eventually became part of the basic architecture with the MMX code becoming a native "must have" in all x86 CPUs. POD went on to sell 4.5 million copies (and share a name with a neu-metal band), while Valay's quotes from this article ("I'm working hard and I'm playing hard every day." "You can train, but you can never beat me because I'm smarter.") apparently went on to inspire Charlie Sheen's attitude about winning. Reflect on the good ol' days, and tell us what you miss most about POD or pre-MMX gaming in the comments!