hckrnws

At the end he write the setup cost him $20, but the display alone sells for $50 (from the amazon link he provided). I'm assuming he had a bunch of the components already, but that's not really a fair cost comparison.

I'm guessing that's a mistake in the article, in the video he says the setup costs $100

I'd love to see this shoved into a Mac SE or Classic chassis with a replacement 9" LCD to match. Jeff, if you're reading this, make it happen lol.

The old Macs really were the perfect form factor for a compact desktop computer—you saw them in every bedroom in every 1990s sitcom.

Are there any good options these days that are smaller than a 24" all-in-one?

Something I wonder about is whether the next few years will see a (small) fashion trend towards 'dumb PCs' similar to how there's a small group of people that prefer simple/feature/dumb phones. There's a number of factors within the PC space now that could see a PC with limited capabilities or primarily offline find its niche. Along with that, having a distinct form to set it apart from regular computing devices would be interesting, and Apple has a lot of them especially from the G3/G4 era.

If this can generate VGA signal, it can also generate driving signals to control the original CRT too. Monochrome CRTs especially don't have fixed pixel counts, you can feed 4K240 signals if you want. It takes an analog circuit designer to pull off though.

There seem to be some 15 inch all-in-ones but these days if what you want is a small form factor the answer is surely a laptop. Even if you're just going to keep it on the same desk forever that's what you'd get if you want 15 inch or smaller.

You can build an SE or Se/30 on a new PCB with a replacement transparent case and analog board.

I think he is 3d printing a 1/2 size classic Mac chassis for the oi2040 rig

I saw someone did the same but with a cool bit of bent plastic for the casing that evoked the original casing in a minimal way.

Edit, this isn't the one I read but looks like the idea is older than I thought as someone was doing it in 2015:

https://www.randomorbit.co.uk/?p=904

Nowadays its possible to just 3d print the case. They even sell PLA filament to match color.

https://arstechnica.com/apple/2025/06/new-filament-lets-you-...

I wonder why he didn't use a RP2350, it costs practically same as the older RP2040. That way it could have 450 kB or so system RAM, enough to play around with some old productivity software.

IMHO, a Macintosh/Apple product is equally about the hardware that delivers the software.

I dont want to belittle the authors work, but I would call this "building custom hardware for a pico-Mac project."

This is nice, but I yearn for the day I can run it on my watch. ;)