- THIS IS TOASTY
A long time ago I made a post on imgur, which I later shared via Reddit about my lovely little toaster PC pet project. Some of the people there have requested a show of how the toaster was built and while I didn't take many pictures, there should still be sufficient to make a very poor show. Let's get started! This is the end result.
- Inception
This was my starting point. On the right we have a Aopen DE7000 PC. These things are usually used as media players for displays within fast foods and all sorts of other digital advertisements. I got this one off e-bay for £60 which was insanely good value for a PC this small. The specs are as follows:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile T7300 - 2.0GHz, 800Mhz, 4MB
GPU: GeForce 9300 graphic engine with PureVideo HD hardware decoder for H.264, VC-1, WMV-HD, MEPG-HD contents with low CPU loading.
RAM: 2GB DDR3 - 1600MHz Notebook Memory
STORAGE: 500GB SATAII 5400RPM HDD
On the left there's a toaster. An ARGOS Simple Value 2 slice toaster to be more exact. It cost £5 new and the second I took it out of its box the timer knob fell off. Good value toaster right there!
- Under da' hood
Opening up the case on the DE7000 we can see it's pretty well made and compact, with two cables running to the lid of the case (power button and front USB ports)
I'm not very interested in the USB ports as I'll use a little retractable USB hub to get IO access however, I do need to turn the bloody thing on so I removed the power button board from the case lid. Now I forgot to take pictures of this but this little board fitted almost perfectly on the eject button slot on the toaster, so I was able to use that button as the power button.
Taking the toaster apart we can see that there is a lot of junk that's not necessary for the build, so most of it was scrap. In all fairness it all probably started out as scrap anyway considering the built quality of this particular toaster. I wouldn't trust the safety of my kitchen with this thing.
The PC was a little bigger than the breadcrumb tray on the toaster's base, and it was also too tall to simply fit inside its new case so it was time to become creative with knives.
One cheap knife later and I was able to cut a hole big enough to fit the PC in snugly. It was at this point that I saw the chicken nuggets and my fatass sense started tingling. Thus instead of taking pictures I was stuffing my face with nuggets and by the time I stopped the toaster was already built.
After fitting the PC there was a lot of room left, and as we all know toasters don't have power bricks, thus I took the liberty of putting that in the case as well. Even with the power brick in there, there's still plenty of room for air circulation and for it to wiggle around if I'm not careful.
In lack of any other solution, I decided that the best way to cover up the base of the toaster and seal off the breadcrumb tray is to tape the living hell out of it. This actually worked out pretty well since I took great care in making sure the tape is fully stretched out. It also leaves for easy access if I ever need to take out the components.
I had this little USB hub lying around and as I didn't want to cut another hole in the toaster for the back IO ports, i decide that this would be the next best thing for connectivity. When not in use it can be fitted easily back into the toaster case
Finally the power and display cables. They both go straight back into the toaster. For some reason the Aopen shipped with a European plug but it wasn't much of a problem.
Pretty neat right?
Now the reason I built it is because I wanted to show that my game, Void 21, can run on pretty much anything, including a toaster. Yes it won't look particularly awesome but then again it's a sacrifice worth making for those who can't afford a better PC but still would like to play my game. In my youth I couldn't run most of the games out there either due to sub-par hardware and I suffered greatly for it so If I can help someone else now, by god I will!