So it all fit, the components worked, and I had a plan of attack. There was only one thing to do. Get out the workbench, the dremel, put on the protective gear, and start hacking. The plastic fumes and metal shards are thoroughly nasty, so remember kids, safety first!

The result of this vicious attack on a defenceless piece of metal and plastic was some nice space and ventilation holes, and a severe lack of grill elements. The elements were actually a real pain to remove, as they were encased in a half-centimetre of metal, which made life quite hard.

Later, it turned out the ATX cabling would end up requiring another gouge out of the lower grill plate. Since the lower plate is pretty much hidden from view, this wasn't such a big deal.

It was only after putting the base together for the first time that I realised the lower plate needed more work. The big fat ATX plugs wouldn't fit.

The base almost closed, but no amount of squishing down would rectify the problem, and I would eventually end up further mutilating the lower grill plate to fit everything in.

The lower grill plate got sliced up to allow some cables to poke out. Not the cleanest solution, but it works.

One small hole later, the base section closed beautifully. Next up, the element and some extraneous metal was removed from the top grill plate. I cut a few notches out of the top plastic portion to allow a power-light cable to fit underneath, illuminating the grill's old power-light space. That was pretty much it for the hardware side.

The OS, Gentoo Linux, took about a week to get fully up and running, as the 600Mhz Eden cpu doesn't exactly scream through large software compiles. The iGrill is pretty lightweight. Most of its life is spent as a music/movie server.

The full component list is:

• George Foreman "Junior" Grill
• VIA Epia CL6000 Mini-ITX motherboard
• 80GB 7200rpm 8MB cache Seagate Barracuda hard drive
• Shuttle SilentX 250W Power Supply
• 512MB PC2100 RAM

All in all, I had a great time doing this project, and I'm really pleased with the results. I'm pretty sure I've got a one-of-a-kind machine now, and so far, it's proving pretty stable, and a nice quiet performer.