MicroMac Raspberry Pi Pico Macintosh Emulator Kit
Emulate the original Macintosh for around $20 (or less) on Raspberry Pi Pico hardware.
The original Apple Macintosh was released over 40 years ago, and to celebrate this milestone – or really more as a wild idea that he could make happen – Matt Evans created the MicroMac. This emulation setup squeezes the power of a 128KB Macintosh onto a Raspberry Pi Pico.
It’s a mind-boggling accomplishment, and a testament to the exponential advance of computing power. Consider that the original Mac cost around 1/3 the price of a working car (as long as it was a VW Golf), but the Pico hardware for the MicroMac, plus some bits you might find around the shop, can be built for less than £5, or ~$6.63 in ‘Merica money.
If you want to take things a step or two further, and substitute in a nicely manufactured PCB for perfboard and parts scrounging, Joe’s Computer Museum is offering a MicroMac adapter kit for $14.99 sans Pico, or $24.99 if you want to include the Raspberry Pi hardware. The kit includes pin headers for the Pico, as well as a VGA port for monitor output. A Micro USB port is provided for power, following along with the Pico motif, and a +/- power pinout is also provided as an alternative.
While this project appears to be a work-in-progress, the Ron’s Computer Videos… video below shows off the MicroMac/adapter setup nicely. Now you can play Frogger and perform other retro-computing tasks in the glorious black and white of years past!