Nintoaster: The Next Generation

The original Nintendo Entertainment System is affectionately called “the toaster” due to the way the cartridge is inserted. [MrBananaHump] decided to take things a bit literally and installed a NES inside an actual toaster. This isn’t [MrBananaHump’s] design, the Nintoaster comes to us from [vomitsaw], who also built the SuperNintoaster. Since [vomitsaw] was kind enough to document his original build, [MrBananaHump] was able to build upon it.

The target toaster for this build was a plastic Sunbeam model found at a thrift store for $5. [MrBananaHump] gutted the toaster and cleaned out years of toast crumbs. The Nintendo mainboard would fit perfectly inside a toaster, except for two things – the RF Modulator and the expansion port. The expansion port was never used in the US version of the NES so it can be desoldered and removed. The RF also needs to be desoldered and relocated.

By far the biggest job in this casemod is hand-wiring each of the 72 pins for the cartridge port. It’s a tedious job, and it probably won’t look pretty. Keep your wires short, and things will probably work thanks to the relatively low clock speed of the NES.

The cartridge goes in one toast slot. [MrBananaHump] mounted his controller ports, power and reset buttons in the second slot. A bit of expanded metal grid completes the slot. Sure, it’s not exactly pretty inside, but with the case on, this becomes a rather nice looking build.

We’ve seen numerous Nintendo casemods over the years, just one other example is this N64 in an N64 controller.

22 thoughts on “Nintoaster: The Next Generation

        1. No. Although “freedom of speech” does not cover the comments section of an electronics blog in any way, we feel, because of classic liberal philosophies and ideas reflected in progressive ‘hacker’ culture today, that everyone has a right to make a complete ass out of themselves.

          Says a lot about our audience, though.

          1. I don’t really see what you get out of insulting someone after he apologized, but … Honestly, I don’t really care. I’ve met you in person and you’re a grand guy, so I’ll chalk it up to “comment sections on the web are horrible by nature”.

          2. what a disgusting comment…

            it wouldn’t be the first time benchoff seems to have responded in a less than ideal way, i can understand a lot of his defensive posts but i cant honestly say i understand ANY the reasons behind this one.

  1. Vomitsaw’s creation is a masterpiece of its time.
    This is a worthy attempt at mimicking that effort. Bravo!

    It pains me though that NES modding options have matured so much since then, but a modern Nintentoaster has not integrated them.

    72 wires for the cartridge connector? It is described as hell to work with. Why not adapt the Blinking Light Win for the task? No soldering!

    Composite video? Why not integrate the NESRGB mod? Or the Hi-Def NES mod?

    In the comments from the creator of this mod, the creator suggests that they are excited that their upcoming SNES toaster will have RGB built-in. This nintoaster could have had the same excitement with the addition of an NESRGB board.

    The constant warnings about the need for desoldering wick were funny though!

  2. Rather than make yourself SUFFER soldering individual wires for all 72 pins of the cartridge connector, gets some male square pin headers, and straddle the edge of the main board, and solder them to the the edge connector. If you can find some of the old style floppy drive edge connectors from WAY back, you can cut a pair of those and MAKE a functional NES cartridge slot with those. Otherwise, a number of options include buying a Blinking Light Win, and salvaging it’s connector. Probably cheaper than gutting a Game Genie (and less evil). Either way, if you use the floppy drive connectors, orient them in such a way that the wiring of it’s cable will lien up with the wiring of the header plug, and plug it into the motherboard’s newly soldered male pin headers. If you have a socket on a PCB or protoboard, then take a make pin header and either bend the PC board leads sideways, outward, so they touch the back of the slot’s pins, or just but a surface mount version. You have to pay special attention to how the wiring works. You might need to have a cable with the header socket mounted one way or the other… Basically…MEASURE it with a continuity tester. Adjust your build to make things work… Still easier than soldering 72 individual wires, even if you have to press the IDC headers the opposite way to make it line up. That’s easy enough to do with a vice, or even a block of wood and a hammer.

      1. Yes, as per usual the HAD author got it wrong. The original NES had carts inserted like a VHS tape, it was the top-loader model that some people called a toaster.

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