Paul Rickards Gives a Decorative Maclock a Serious Upgrade, Creates a Tiny Working Apple Macintosh
A Raspberry Pi transplant turns a tiny Mac-themed digital clock into an equally-tiny replica Macintosh, complete with networking support.
Artist and vintage computing enthusiast Paul Rickards has turned a classic Apple Macintosh-themed digital clock into a fully-working tiny emulator, complete with network connectivity — by replacing its guts with a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+.
"A while back I bought two of those Maclocks with the intention of modding one into a tiny [Apple] Mac," Rickards explains. "After seeing the success of [Gary Parker] I decided to give it a go. To make a Mac, I'm using a [Raspberry] Pi Zero 2 W, a Waveshare 2.8" DPI LCD, and the MacintoshPi image which includes Basilisk II and SheepShaver already installed, and they work without X11 running, perfect for the thin-resourced [Raspberry] Pi Zero."
The Maclock is exactly what the name implies: a clock themed like Apple's original Macintosh computer, which the company launched back in 1984 — but in a considerably smaller scale. An on-board bitmap display features chunky pixel graphics, there's environmental monitoring capabilities, and you even "boot" the system from a teeny tiny plastic floppy.
With the original innards removed, though, a Maclock serves as the ideal housing for an emulated Macintosh. After initially using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W to prove the concept, Rickards swapped to a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ — the last of the reduced-size Model A single-board computers, after the Raspberry Pi 4 launched in larger Model B form only and the Raspberry Pi 5 ditched the "Model A/B" suffix entirely — to improve performance and add 5GHz Wi-Fi.
In addition to being able to run original Macintosh software under emulation, it also includes networking support — though while AppleTalk is fully supported, an apparent bug in the emulator requires the network interface to be placed into promiscuous mode for TCP/IP traffic.
"Maybe the TinyMac works well enough to be a GlobalTalk router," Rickards suggests, referring to a community-driven project to connect original and emulated AppleTalk devices globally via the internet. "[It] certainly uses a lot less power (avg. about 400mA with screen on.)"
More information is available in Rickards' Mastodon thread.