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MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

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Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#81

Post by rbanffy »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #9
MenhirMike wrote: post #6

I was considering doing something like that for an Amiga, running AmigaOS 3.2. It's a cute idea, especially once you 3D print a shell that looks like the original (shrunken down). I do think that the lack of an old school floppy drive means that something is kinda missing from the experience, but I do like the idea of having a machine dedicated to running this instead of just firing up an emulator on my existing desk…

Need CRT too for the authentic experience.

We need doubly-curved OLED screens. We can already do Trinitron (cylindrical) ones with the flexible displays we have.

It is an interesting problem, though. I noticed in Disney's Loki, they used a combination of VFX and lenses on top of flat panels to give the impression they were using CRTs (notably in their ADM-3 lookalikes). For a 9~14" CRT it'd be a fairly large lens that would need to be optically connected to the panel below (so not to have internal reflections).

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#82

Post by rbanffy »

malux85 wrote: post #12
MenhirMike wrote: post #6

I was considering doing something like that for an Amiga, running AmigaOS 3.2. It's a cute idea, especially once you 3D print a shell that looks like the original (shrunken down). I do think that the lack of an old school floppy drive means that something is kinda missing from the experience, but I do like the idea of having a machine dedicated to running this instead of just firing up an emulator on my existing desk…

I would buy this! Especially if you got the sizing right so that an SD card could be inserted like a floppy, that would rock!

Someone will eventually make a Mac LC Mini ;-)

Just kidding. Apple would NEVER allow that.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#83

Post by rbanffy »

dannyobrien wrote: post #7

I had a Saturday job at a computer shop when the Mac came out, and we got one as a demo. I remember just staring at the genius of those rounded corners in the corners of the screen, and thinking how beautiful it was that they'd thought of that.

On my first actual job, we did that with Apple II software. You don't only lose the corners, but you need to lose a whole column of pixels to make the rounded corner work on a checkered background.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#84

Post by rjst01 »

rjmunro wrote: post #78
rjst01 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hill I will die on is that tech products should just stop bundling cables, for anything, with the possible exception of unit-specific power adapters. A while back I purchased a KVM switch - it came with 3 DP cables, which went straight into my e-waste box. I've also seen office fit-outs where mountains of cables that came with monitors went straight from factory to landfill because they were the wrong length. I und…

> possible exception of unit-specific power adapters No. Unit-specific power adapters should not exist. Either put a USB-C or a 120v/240v AC connector on the device, depending on power requirements. It's really not that hard. Note: it must be connector, not a fixed cable. I.e. an IEC C8 or C14.

I agree in principle, but I think there has to be some room for exceptions here. Some portable devices like smartwatches are too space constrained for USB-C and some devices might use too much power for USB-PD but still be too small to include the power supply internally. Also, some of my synth gear uses a locking barrel connector, which I think is a better trade-off than a locking USB-C connector because it can be locked and unlocked faster.

Bundled power bricks are also much less likely to directly be e-wasted without being used.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#85

Post by marbletiles »

jwells89 wrote: post #27

Super cool project. It makes me wonder what the smallest/barest SBC one could get away with for emulating the last 68k Macs or average mid-to-late 90s PPC Mac at full performance might be. Retrofitting a modernish laptop body of some sort with one of those so it would be capable of running System 7.6.1 up through Mac OS 9.x could make for a surprisingly useful "zen mode" laptop.

This is precisely what I want. 7.6 with all-day battery life in an ultralight would be heaven for me.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#86

Post by lopis »

rjst01 wrote: post #68
firewolf34 wrote: post #24

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!

A hill I will die on is that tech products should just stop bundling cables, for anything, with the possible exception of unit-specific power adapters. A while back I purchased a KVM switch - it came with 3 DP cables, which went straight into my e-waste box. I've also seen office fit-outs where mountains of cables that came with monitors went straight from factory to landfill because they were the wrong length. I und…

You won't die alone on that hill. I think it's a great thing that many phones no longer ship with chargers. The mild inconvenience of having to buy a separate charger should not outweigh the reduction amount of waste we produce with new chargers.

Brazil has made it illegal to sell a phone without a charger which IMO is a total step backwards. If anything, it should be illegal to not give the option to unbundle cables from the package.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#87

Post by ghaff »

ssl-3 wrote: post #33
firewolf34 wrote: post #24

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!

Things come and go. :) I save at least one example of every kind of computer, RF, or AV wire, but I only keep what I deem to be current-gen for my own world. The stuff that doesn't make the cut get sold by the pound periodically at a local scrap yard after I prep them by snipping the connectors off, which generates a meaningful amount of folding cash -- enough for a coney dog and some ice cream from around the corner…

At some point, you have boxes and boxes of stuff that may contain something that might be useful someday on the off-chance that you can actually find that thing when you need it. I'd love to connect everything to the person--including future me--who would find it useful (or thinks they would in the moment) but it's often not practical.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#88

Post by ale42 »

rjmunro wrote: post #78
rjst01 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hill I will die on is that tech products should just stop bundling cables, for anything, with the possible exception of unit-specific power adapters. A while back I purchased a KVM switch - it came with 3 DP cables, which went straight into my e-waste box. I've also seen office fit-outs where mountains of cables that came with monitors went straight from factory to landfill because they were the wrong length. I und…

> possible exception of unit-specific power adapters No. Unit-specific power adapters should not exist. Either put a USB-C or a 120v/240v AC connector on the device, depending on power requirements. It's really not that hard. Note: it must be connector, not a fixed cable. I.e. an IEC C8 or C14.

This might apply to (most) IT devices. But there are devices that require 24 V, or 48 V, or any other voltage that USB-C can't supply, and that for various reasons (space, EMI, possibly even compliance with some safety regulation) can't contain an integrated power supply unit from 120/230 V mains. Of course this should be an exception and most consumer devices can definitely work with the regular voltages and currents that USB-C can supply.

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#89

Post by twobitshifter »

ssl-3 wrote: post #55
rnewme wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am more suprised that the BMW outlasted the remote starter!

Re: MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5

#90

Post by speedbird »

rbanffy wrote: post #75
firewolf34 wrote: post #24

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!

Where I live I can only find discarded beer cans and (used) Costa Coffee cups, and inverted broken umbrellas, because itś windy. These people must live in a nicer part of a nicer city ;-) BTW, in which city can I find a discarded DEC V230/240 or 330 terminal on the street? I need it as a reference implementation of Tektronix graphics ate ReGIS. I promised the VTE crowd I'd work on that.

Seem to remember xterm also did tektronix. Haven’t looked at the source for 35 years / x11r5 but should be doable.
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