August 28, 2013

Mac Fan designs palm sized working Mini Mac with Raspberry Pi

by Shayne Rana

The good old Mac has had its fan following since day one. In many ways, those fans are still very ardent and often look for ways to reminisce about the good old days, like RetroMacCast co-host John Leake. He took his reminiscence to whole other level and with a little thoughtful ingenuity, a little PVC and a little Raspberry Pi, he made himself a little Mini Mac to bring back memories.

After getting his housing in place thanks to all kinds of odds and ends, Leake used a Linux system with Mini vMac to emulate System 6.0.8 on his machine. His little Mini Mac also has a 3.5-inch display that is capable of supporting a resolution of 512 × 384 pixels which is quite awesome. Since the Mini vMac doesn’t quite play nice with Raspberry Pi on the audio front, this little palm sized computer won’t be dishing out any tunes. Of course that in no way diminishes the accomplishment. His Mini Mac also comes with an Ethernet port, 2 USB slots and HDMI as well. Leake might have just inspired a slew of Mac fanboys to get in on the Raspberry Pi-meets-Mini Mac wagon and even if it doesn’t really do everything you’d expect, I know I’d still like to have one sit beside my computer just for that look of nostalgia.