Building Your Own Mac Pi

Taking inspiration from John Badger of Retromaccast, let’s move to good old days of retro and make a personal Mac classic with 3d printings and DIY electronics. If you are interested in taking things a part or in 3D printing, then this project by Ruiz brothers will fascinate you. This article will partially guide you with the steps of printing, building and assembling your own mac pi which will include a Raspberry Pi Model B and 320×240 mini touch screen display.

Equipment required

Parts & Components of this project are easily available in the electronic shop. Apart from raspberry pi B and PiTFT 320×240 2.8″ Touchscreen, you will need a Lithium Ion Battery, power boost and slide switch to make your mac portable. In case you want to add internal speakers as audio isn’t supported in vmac, you can have stereo class D and a thin speaker of 8ohm 0.25w.

You will also require other tools & supplies for this project like a 3D Printer and an ABS/PLA Filament. Make sure to be equipped with Wire Stripper, Soldering Iron and 26AWG stranded wire. You will also need Pi GPIO ribbon cable and other small stuffs. You will also require panel mount HDMI cable.

Working

This project doesn’t require original hardware and can be completed through minor assembly and soldering. Mini vMac is an emulator that was used to run software for early Macs microprocessors and Raspberry Pi can run a duplicate of mini vmac and emulates booting into Mac OS 7. Mini vmac can run alongside raspbian. You can start with printing the parts on a FDM 3D Printer.

Challenges and Expectations

The problem with this project lies in builder experience. If 3D printing and raspberry pi are new to your world, then it is difficult otherwise it has alternatives too. For instance, you can still make this project by having a 3d printing service make and ship the parts to you. And when it comes to hardware like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi, there’s only a minor bit of soldering and most components are just connected together.

But the Mac emulator being used does boot up and can run some basic apps but, there is only minor Application Support and no Audio Support. Further it has Only Mac 7 and No Networking.

If you are new to project and terms, it is recommended to have guidance to get you situated with the Raspberry Pi and the Mini PiTFT 320×240 touch screen display.