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MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

axio.ms

51–60 of 180 posts

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#51
post #38

How are these people finding VGA cables in the street :S I needed like 10 or so VGA cables recently for an art installation and asked everyone I could and nobody had any lying around... I ended up having to buy new ones which seems a shame considering how many are thrown away!

You would be surprised how much trash there is in the city around us, that you suddenly start noticing when you have a diy project. Let me share you some moments of my own with you. I was leaving university campus with my buddies, talking about building magnetic card reader to check contents of my campus library card. Just as I was explaining magnetic heads to one of the guys I see a random cassette player few meters…

We need to deal with some important issues you raised.

> After the date... She quickly learned I'm no stranger to dumpster adventures.

Ah, was there another date?

> Recently, I was renovating something with my wife

Any relationship to dumpster adventuress?

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#52
post #50
post #42

Why not store emulated RAM on disk and get the full 512KB experience? Killing the drive from overuse? Surely the flash speed of the RP2040 surpasses the RAM speed of the original Mac.

If only the RP2040 supported SPI PSRAM!

what about a esp32-s3?

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#55
post #38

How are these people finding VGA cables in the street :S I needed like 10 or so VGA cables recently for an art installation and asked everyone I could and nobody had any lying around... I ended up having to buy new ones which seems a shame considering how many are thrown away!

You would be surprised how much trash there is in the city around us, that you suddenly start noticing when you have a diy project. Let me share you some moments of my own with you. I was leaving university campus with my buddies, talking about building magnetic card reader to check contents of my campus library card. Just as I was explaining magnetic heads to one of the guys I see a random cassette player few meters…

A million years ago, I spent two cold nights standing on my head in the driver's side footwell of my E36 BMW, installing an inexpensive Wal-Mart-sourced CodeAlarm remote starter to make my then-wife happy.

It worked great. It could even operate the door locks and roll the windows up with the fob (none of which sounds very special for a modern vehicle, but my car was not equipped with remote-anything from the factory so all of this was very nice).

Over a decade later, the fob got destroyed in an unfortunate boating incident. I was bummed. Replacements were available to purchase and I hemmed and hawed about buying one, or maybe upgrading to a fancier system, or just getting over it and continuing to use the key in the lock cylinder (like some commoner!) to lock and unlock the doors.

And then I was walking down the street in Bexley, Ohio, and I saw a broken laundry basket full of discarded things ("illegally dumped" things) on the curb. It appeared to have all manner of random household trash.

But on the top of that basket of stuff was a plastic clamshell. And inside that clamshell was an identical remote starter kit -- exactly the same as the one I'd bought forever ago.

It was unopened.

A few careful slashes with my pocket knife later, and I had a new remote. Even the ancient tiny little 12V (A23) alkaline battery still worked -- and kept working for months. (I left the rest of the trash where it was.)

Sometimes the universe does provide for those who keep their eyes open.

(Pairing the new remote was interesting because it involved operating the brake pedal switch while the car was turned off, and the E36 turns off the brake light circuit completely when the car is turned off... But those are just BMW problems. I got it sorted.)

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#56
post #38

How are these people finding VGA cables in the street :S I needed like 10 or so VGA cables recently for an art installation and asked everyone I could and nobody had any lying around... I ended up having to buy new ones which seems a shame considering how many are thrown away!

You would be surprised how much trash there is in the city around us, that you suddenly start noticing when you have a diy project. Let me share you some moments of my own with you. I was leaving university campus with my buddies, talking about building magnetic card reader to check contents of my campus library card. Just as I was explaining magnetic heads to one of the guys I see a random cassette player few meters…

Exactly this, one has to keep their eyes open and give luck a chance to happen.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#57
post #38

How are these people finding VGA cables in the street :S I needed like 10 or so VGA cables recently for an art installation and asked everyone I could and nobody had any lying around... I ended up having to buy new ones which seems a shame considering how many are thrown away!

You would be surprised how much trash there is in the city around us, that you suddenly start noticing when you have a diy project. Let me share you some moments of my own with you. I was leaving university campus with my buddies, talking about building magnetic card reader to check contents of my campus library card. Just as I was explaining magnetic heads to one of the guys I see a random cassette player few meters…

Unfortunately, where I live, people bring their trash to the dumpster. And it's illegal to take stuff out of it…

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#58
I feel like this is missing a link to spritesmod[0], which might use a little bit of a bigger platform (esp32) but a functional Mac plus that fits in your palm is absurd.

I would never have thought you could do what OP did, rp2040 looks way too small, amazing work!

[0]: http://spritesmods.com/?art=minimacplus&page=7

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#59

How are these people finding VGA cables in the street :S I needed like 10 or so VGA cables recently for an art installation and asked everyone I could and nobody had any lying around... I ended up having to buy new ones which seems a shame considering how many are thrown away!

I feel ya, it's tough now with some stuff. There is an old firewire to scsi adapter out ther, if you can find one it's $500+ now lol.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#60

Something like this that could run the latest macos would be amazing.. I am disgusted by having to buy a mac just so I can build to iOS. That kind of thing should be illegal.

You can use GitHub actions to build to mac (and I assume iOS as well).
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