Well, I was on the forums back when TDS was Jason's Abol Message board. That was 96-97ish. I was selling super duper awesome and slightly dangerous two stage propane systems to the masses back in 98-99. Had twin turbos on my PSD back in 00-01ish. Was over 500 on fuel back in 03ish, over 600 on fuel in 04. All my stuff was homemade. The only things I ever really bought from the regular vendors through the whole thing were: 300HP Hypermax whole friggin pcm(lol), a TTS chip when that was the biggest and baddest, a set of hypermax stage II's from BTS, a chip from Bill when he first started DP tuner, and Swamp reworked my stage II's back when he first started doing injectors.
As for everyone else, this is what I can remember:
I met Frank/Powersnorter back in 99. At that time he was running: lower compression, worked 530 injectors, BTS, water injection, a big f'n turbo from Hypermax, Hypermax cam, and a huge fuel supply system from Hypermax. I remember having conversations with him back in 99 about how we needed more high pressure oil.
Maddog always had a really good running truck. I would definately give him credit for starting the modified injector craze. Other than Hypermax, he was the only real visible source for modified injectors for a while. I always liked Maddog. Good egg.
I would also throw a big ups to Swamp and in turn Golfer. Swamp was always involved in whatever discussion we had going back in the day. I distinctly remember him sharing his discoveries after tearing his first PSD injector apart. I really don't think those guys get enough credit for the distance they have brought us in the past few years. The work they have done has rippled through the whole 7.3 market. And if they didn't actually make an advancement in a particular area themselves, others that did no doubt built on what they figured out. Well, and others then reverse engineered. lol
Others that I remember in no particular order: Pyschostroker, Casey, Steve Niezer, Steve Cole, and Mark Craig.