The NetBSD Toaster

kv9 writes "Finally after many, many yeas of running on everything-but-your-toaster NetBSD is there too. Technologic Systems has made a toaster that is controlled by NetBSD and powered by one of their ARM boards, the TS-7200. Everything is controlled through sysctl, there are LEDs that show you what is going on, the toaster can play MP3s while it fries the bread and even has Apache/PHP installed. More information in the press release [pdf warning] and on this running NetBSD on the TS-7200 page."

Comments

Re:Already Dead

[timonak]

Actually, according to Jessie Off (or was it Eddie Dawydiuk) from Technologic Systems, there website does indeed run on a TS-7200. Which works quiet well to serve there site, except when the slashdot hoards hit.

I'm glad I viewed the write up last night. . .

Ok, I give up.

[bluephone]

Back in high school, '92 I think, a friend and I created a serial toaster. I did the hardware and he did up the controlling software that even had a door for our BBS. From ToasTerm, with pretty ANSI graphics and everything, you could select the toast level, "push" the lever to turn it on, see a little timer for how much longer was left, and then "see" the toast pop up. The toaster hooked to a serial port, the brown-o-meter was controlled with a stepper motor froma floppy drive, and the up/down lever was a pair of servo motors.

If you looked carefully in the door program, there was an easter egg that would launch the toast out of the toaster. I rigged a solenoid to fire against the handle, and the toast would fly a good 5 feet. When this eventually shattered the plastic handle, so we replaced that with a steel bolt so it wouldn't break.

Eventually the controller board did manage to catch fire. But ToasTerm was still a hit on the BBS so we left it on without the Serial Toaster still connected.

This beats the shit out of our toaster.

Re:second slice of toast

[PakProtector]

Since my roommate, who was at LinuxWorld with the NetBSD team, and actually got to use the Toaster and run the Toaster Demos, got back a little under 4 hours ago, I can answer your question.

The Toast will always cook for the correct time. The mechanism that 'drops' the basket the toast is in is held there by sleep, not by a monitor of the temperature of basket, or by some flimsy piece two metals sandwiched together that heat at different rates.

It is a fine device.