MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

How are these people finding VGA cables in the street :S I needed like 10 or so VGA cables recently for an art installation and asked everyone I could and nobody had any lying around... I ended up having to buy new ones which seems a shame considering how many are thrown away!

I was considering doing something like that for an Amiga, running AmigaOS 3.2. It&#x27;s a cute idea, especially once you 3D print a shell that looks like the original (shrunken down).<p>I do think that the lack of an old school floppy drive means that something is kinda missing from the experience, but I do like the idea of having a machine dedicated to running this instead of just firing up an emulator on my existing desktop PC. (Edit: And I love how this MicroMac project isn&#x27;t just &quot;running Linux and an existing emulator&quot; but actually trying to go lower level, essentially the RP2040 acting as a 68k)

This is a really impressive project! It was a fun read. Thanks for sharing! I like this writing style.<p>&gt; As an aside, I try to create a dual-target build for all my embedded projects, with a native host build for rapid prototyping&#x2F;debugging<p>I find myself doing the same thing on my embedded projects, including at my job. I actually find myself using the PC build much more frequently than the hardware for my day-to-day work now that the hardware layer is stable and tested. More people should do this!

I had a Saturday job at a computer shop when the Mac came out, and we got one as a demo. I remember just staring at the genius of those rounded corners in the corners of the screen, and thinking how beautiful it was that they&#x27;d thought of that.

I feel like this is missing a link to spritesmod[0], which might use a little bit of a bigger platform (esp32) but a functional Mac plus that fits in your palm is absurd.<p>I would never have thought you could do what OP did, rp2040 looks way too small, amazing work!<p>[0]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spritesmods.com&#x2F;?art=minimacplus&amp;page=7" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spritesmods.com&#x2F;?art=minimacplus&amp;page=7</a>

Super cool project.<p>It makes me wonder what the smallest&#x2F;barest SBC one could get away with for emulating the last 68k Macs or average mid-to-late 90s PPC Mac at full performance might be. Retrofitting a modernish laptop body of some sort with one of those so it would be capable of running System 7.6.1 up through Mac OS 9.x could make for a surprisingly useful &quot;zen mode&quot; laptop.

Holy cow. I took a stab at hacking vMac to run on an ESP32 and gave up (it’s been done on some models, but not on the one I had handy), but this is several levels above and beyond.<p>I take off my metaphorical hat to you, sir.

It&#x27;s a shame monitors don&#x27;t provide 5V from pin9 of the VGA connector... Would be nice to be able to power things from the monitor connection. IIRC, SCART provides +9V.

Why not store emulated RAM on disk and get the full 512KB experience? Killing the drive from overuse? Surely the flash speed of the RP2040 surpasses the RAM speed of the original Mac.

Very nice finding a random VGA cable on the road. Happened to me once or twice, but never when I wanted one of them.

mirror as it looks like the blog is getting overloaded: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;NXWOm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;NXWOm</a>

one of these running system 7 would be a delight, seeing that&#x27;s probably where the classic Mac OS hit its peak.

I wondered if anyone had written an IWM simulator, and I didn&#x27;t find one, but I did find this FPGA project:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bigmessowires.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;12&#x2F;07&#x2F;fpga-based-disk-controller-for-apple-ii&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bigmessowires.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;12&#x2F;07&#x2F;fpga-based-disk-con...</a>

What about every computer up to the 90s for ~10€ of hardware to house inside of an existing keyboard?<p>(or your subset of favorites)

I was hoping this was a super cheap hackintosh running modern macOS. Is that even possible these days?

Awesome way to give kids their first computer and it can only do what it can do.

Now I&#x27;m thinking about the creative misuse of (non-existing) technology.<p>From the numbering scheme, the &quot;4&quot; in &quot;RP2040&quot; is log2(ram&#x2F;16K). If we wanted to emulate a Lisa, we&#x27;d need 1MB of RAM, which would mean, at least, an RP2060 chip (log2(1024&#x2F;16) = 6) or, more comfortably, an RP4x70 or RP2x80). Those parts, unfortunately, don&#x27;t exist yet. Maybe they get inspired with their IPO and start making those parts.

The VGA interface is the most impressive part to me somehow.

&gt; (Do you find “Pico Micro Mac” doesn’t really scan? I didn’t think this taxonomy through, did I?)<p>I think &quot;Atto Mac&quot; rolls off the tongue nicely.

Why not base it on ESP32? You can emulate multiple OS-es, including Commodore VIC20, MS-DOS, Windows 3.0, Linux ELKS - all using FabGL: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;fdivitto&#x2F;FabGL">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;fdivitto&#x2F;FabGL</a>

&gt; The day I started soldering it together I needed a VGA connector. I had a DB15 but wanted it for another project, and felt bad about cutting up a VGA cable. But when I took a walk at lunchtime, no shitting you, I passed some street cables. I had a VGA cable – the rust helps with the janky aesthetic.<p>Sometimes this happens.

&gt; Everyone loves MacPaint. Maybe you love MacPaint, and have noticed I’ve deftly avoided mentioning it. Okay, FINE:<p>To be honest, I&#x27;d bet Bill Atkinson knew every trick in the book and used many for making MacPaint work in the original constraints provided.<p>I&#x27;m not sure that&#x27;s a fair fight for the author.

Very neat. I so wanted a Mac back in the day... It is amazing what can be done now with modern micro controllers. Thanks for writing it all up.

How about the same thing on a 68K emulated with an FPGA? (ok it will probably cost more than 5 pounds)

Also cool would be to compile and run this emulator on a standard Raspberry Pi under a RTOS.

I guess Lemmings, After Dark and The Cycles would work there?

Something like this that could run the latest macos would be amazing.. I am disgusted by having to buy a mac just so I can build to iOS. That kind of thing should be illegal.

Want! Looks like fun.

But it&#x27;s not a Macintosh; it&#x27;s a Raspberry Pi emulating a Macintosh