Devon's Toastmaster Conversion Project

This is the process I went through to convert my toaster into a computer.

The goal of this project was mostly to build a computer out of a classic toaster oven. The finished product consists of a Micro ATX motherboard with an AMD Duron 750MHz processor, 512M ram, 40G drive, a couple case fans, and a slightly modified ATX power supply.
Update: I've recently upgraded to an AMD Athalon 2600 system with 1.5 Gig ram, and a 120 Gig hard drive. It was a real simple upgrade procedure; slide out grill, remove old motherboard, set new motherboard on grill, close glass door.

To start the process, I had to clean the toaster being that it was in fact used as a toaster. After the removal of the baked in pizza, I removed most of the functional toaster parts, leaving me a bare case to work with.

My first major concern was heat. This was a toaster oven after all, and AMD's are known to run hot anyway. So, I decided that I would drill holes in either end of the toaster, and blow the air through with two 80mm case fans. This turned out to work well, but it was hard to build. I didn't have anything that could cut an 80mm hole through sheet metal, so I drilled a bunch of 1/4 in. holes to make a circle. This took longer than expected since I had to drill about 50 in each side.

Then once that was done, I still had to drill through the heat-resistant plastic on the outside edges. For this I just drilled holes in a circle, then used a saw to connect the dots.

With the case ready, I now had to put in components. First, the power supply. I took a regular ATX power supply and removed it from it's case and tried to put it in the side of the toaster. Unfortunately the heat sync's were about 3/4 in. too tall. So I cut them down a little. Now it all fit perfect.

Next I got a neon light and mounted it in the top of the case and wired the switch to the front of the case to the switch that was originally the temperature. Now 300 is off, 350 the light is on.

Finally I put the motherboard onto the grilling rack, and the hard drive on the bottom of the case.

I recently obtained a CD-RW, and decided to cram it into my toaster as well. It was a bit of a fight, but now my toaster can burn CD's as well as toast!

To see more pictures click
here

Send your comments to devon at yahwey.com

I have received many questions asking why I would build a computer out of a toaster, and yes, I did have too much time on my hands.