Miniature Macintosh with Raspberry Pi

The original Macintosh’s boxy all-in-one design is iconic, but has long been surpassed by modern computing options. If you’d like a reminder of this techno-touchstone, in a boxy beige form factor that won’t dominate your desk, the Tiny Mac III uses a Pi 4 to cram lots of retro goodness into a very small package.

The device was inspired by the Tiny Mac running on a Raspberry Pi Zero, which was in turn inspired by a similar little Mac built a decade ago. Creator The_Old_Wolf first built a Tiny Mac II with a Pi Zero 2, then branched off from its predecessors with a Pi 4 processing unit. This gives the Tiny Mac III lots of power to perform functions like running Pi-hole for ad blocking, using xscreensaver as an electronic photo frame, or even running gnome-weather to display conditions outside.

The Tiny Mac III features a 3D-printed enclosure, which houses the Pi 4 inside along with a 3.5" Waveshare display as the monitor. The screen connector was cleverly modified to include a gap where pins for a safe shutdown button were installed. The button is mounted to the back, near a composite Apple/Raspberry Pi logo. Another brilliant touch is that the Pi's activity LED is visible via a fiber optic cable that routes light to the outside of the case.

Build and software instructions can be found in the project write-up, and resources are available there as well as on GitHub. This also includes info on The_Old_Wolf’s Tiny Mac II. Between these and previous builds, there should be ample inspiration if you want to make your own mini-retro Macintosh!