[HN Gopher] MicroMac, a Macintosh for under PS5
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MicroMac, a Macintosh for under PS5
Author : als0
Score : 793 points
Date : 2024-06-16 20:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (axio.ms)
(TXT) w3m dump (axio.ms)
| riffic wrote:
| one of these running system 7 would be a delight, seeing that's
| probably where the classic Mac OS hit its peak.
| rcarmo wrote:
| You can do that comfortably on a "normal" Rasbperry Pi - I have
| a bunch of resources for that here:
| https://taoofmac.com/space/emulation
| xixixao wrote:
| I was hoping this was a super cheap hackintosh running modern
| macOS. Is that even possible these days?
| MenhirMike wrote:
| > Is that even possible these days?
|
| It still kinda is as long as macOS supports Intel, but the
| writing is on the wall:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39728146
| Moto7451 wrote:
| Yes. The biggest limiting factor for "cheap" is building around
| a CPU with a supported GPU. A second hand RX 4xx/5xx series
| card is a good pick if you can't find a chip with supported
| iGPU.
| vessenes wrote:
| I'm asking out of genuine curiosity - what are the reasons
| you'd want that, other than a fun project? There's so much
| hardware integration in the stack of a modern Mac that it would
| feel a little hard for me to even say a hackintosh was a Mac.
|
| Anyways, curious what you have in mind.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Holy cow. I took a stab at hacking vMac to run on an ESP32 and
| gave up (it's been done on some models, but not on the one I had
| handy), but this is several levels above and beyond.
|
| I take off my metaphorical hat to you, sir.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I ran Mini vMac on a Raspberry Pi and got a decent looking Mac
| clone.
|
| https://imgur.com/gallery/raspberry-pi-running-mini-vmac-cus...
| MenhirMike wrote:
| 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 desktop PC. (Edit: And
| I love how this MicroMac project isn't just "running Linux and an
| existing emulator" but actually trying to go lower level,
| essentially the RP2040 acting as a 68k)
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Need CRT too for the authentic experience.
| rbanffy wrote:
| 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).
| numpad0 wrote:
| Can't it be done with a DLP device? CRT was X-ray
| projection device with phosphor paint applied inside to
| convert the rays to visible light.
| habi wrote:
| CRTs were emitting an electron beam to draw images on a
| phosphorescent screen, not emitting X-rays:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube Blasting
| X-rays through a screen to the face of an observer would
| not have been a good idea...
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Interestingly, a lot of folks used to repeat the x-ray
| thing, that's where the term "eyeball cancer machine"
| came from.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Well... Technically we spent a lot of time looking down
| the barrel of a particle accelerator...
| malux85 wrote:
| 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!
| rbanffy wrote:
| Someone will eventually make a Mac LC Mini ;-)
|
| Just kidding. Apple would NEVER allow that.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Right on the money: "SD card could be inserted like a floppy"
| travem wrote:
| You could check out the A500 mini, more of an emulator though -
| https://retrogames.biz/products/thea500-mini/
| MenhirMike wrote:
| Yeah, I have one, and the keyboard being non-functional is a
| real bummer. It's a neat mini console (especially once you
| add some additional games), but I wish they would make a
| version with a working keyboard, like they made TheC64. But
| the quality of the case is great, and the tank mouse
| definitely is the way to use workbench)
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| A500 Mini isn't as cool IMO. It's just a generic arm board
| running linux with an Amiga emulator. The keys don't even
| work. May as well just use a Pi or a PC.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| Amiga emulator on teensy 4.1: https://www.pjrc.com/amiga-
| emulator-on-teensy-4-1/
| dannyobrien wrote:
| 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.
| petemc_ wrote:
| In case you haven't read it -
| https://folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| This is brilliant, thanks!
| rbanffy wrote:
| 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.
| aerioux wrote:
| mirror as it looks like the blog is getting overloaded:
| https://archive.ph/NXWOm
| stavros wrote:
| Thanks, I thought the slowness was because of my phone and was
| about to order a new one.
| jimbobthrowawy wrote:
| Very nice finding a random VGA cable on the road. Happened to me
| once or twice, but never when I wanted one of them.
| justinator wrote:
| Thrift store?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I often see those at flea markets / garage sales, sometimes
| by the metric ton (OK, exaggerating a bit).
| opan wrote:
| That was the highlight of the story for me.
| str3wer wrote:
| are they that hard to find in your country? for me it's way
| more likely to find a VGA cable around than an HDMI when i need
| it
| kreelman wrote:
| Very neat. I so wanted a Mac back in the day... It is amazing
| what can be done now with modern micro controllers. Thanks for
| writing it all up.
| bmacho wrote:
| > The day I started soldering it together I needed a VGA
| connector. I had a DB15 but wanted it for another project, and
| felt bad about cutting up a VGA cable. But when I took a walk at
| lunchtime, no shitting you, I passed some street cables. I had a
| VGA cable - the rust helps with the janky aesthetic.
|
| Sometimes this happens.
| icehawk wrote:
| > Everyone loves MacPaint. Maybe you love MacPaint, and have
| noticed I've deftly avoided mentioning it. Okay, FINE:
|
| To be honest, I'd bet Bill Atkinson knew every trick in the book
| and used many for making MacPaint work in the original
| constraints provided.
|
| I'm not sure that's a fair fight for the author.
| novagameco wrote:
| But it's not a Macintosh; it's a Raspberry Pi emulating a
| Macintosh
| firewolf34 wrote:
| 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!
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| I hope your art installation didnt involve CRT monitors?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I hope it did
| nirav72 wrote:
| Lot of people keep/store old cables. I personally have several
| hundred cables of various types collected over the years put
| away in couple of plastic crates. Sometimes I find them at work
| that are just sitting in boxes waiting to be thrown away or
| just extra cables that come with monitors or other devices.
| They come in handy for projects or when I'm tinkering with old
| hardware.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Goodwill?
| ssl-3 wrote:
| 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, anyway. (Rules vary; the scrap
| yard near me is very happy to buy deconnectorized insulated
| computer-ish cables. Some might buy them with the connectors
| attached. Some might not want this kind of wire at all.)
|
| I like having what I might need on-hand, but I also dislike the
| notion of hoarding. I try to keep it balanced.
|
| Sometimes, this bites me. I hadn't use a VGA cable for years
| during the last culling so they all got recycled, and then I
| needed one a few months ago for an old Compaq server. I found a
| beige HD15 cable at work that functioned well-enough, but it
| was a blurry mess (real VGA cables have coax inside, and this
| cable did not).
|
| I even ran out of bog-standard IEC computer power cords a
| couple of years ago and had to -- you know -- actually buy one.
| I never thought this would be a possibility.
|
| What happened to your own stash of VGA cables?
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| > 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.
|
| It actually amazes me that this isn't a well-solved problem
| by now. We've got various marketplaces for used items
| (eBay, CL, FB Marketplace, etc.) and we've got various
| rental/sharing platforms for niche things (Uber, Airbnb,
| etc.) and those are decent for what they are, yet somehow
| the inherent inefficiencies (effort to list an item, effort
| to discover an item, platform fees, etc.) suggest that
| there is a lot of room for improvement.
|
| It's kind of like how scheduling assistant
| features/products, such as Calendly, offer a massive
| improvement over writing messages back and forth along the
| lines of "send me your availability," yet a
| verbal/synchronous discussion isn't nearly as bad as
| written/async, since it gets you across the finish line
| quickly despite many round trips, so lots of people are
| fine doing that instead of using efficient tools, so
| there's no mass adoption/demand.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's just hard to get away from the transaction costs
| associated with exchanging low-value physical goods over
| distance. A swap meet with a local electronics club?
| Sure. But selling individual items on eBay? Not so much.
|
| There were a bunch of ideas associated with the early Web
| like sharing tools and so forth that just don't make
| sense outside an informal neighborhood "economy" (and
| often not even there).
| II2II wrote:
| The thrift stores in my area have tonnes of VGA cables.
|
| If you're the type of person who regularly visits thrift
| stores, taking the time to go through the cables and wall-warts
| is worth it. The staff don't know what they have and everything
| is priced more-or-less the same. You can end up getting some
| quality and rare cables for a pittance. It is one of the few
| sections of modern thrift stores that feel like thrift stores
| of old.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _It is one of the few sections of modern thrift stores that
| feel like thrift stores of old._
|
| Also home theater speakers.
| rtpg wrote:
| I feel like a lot of major urban centers have "that" store
| whose entire business model is collecting electronics from
| failing businesses and then selling that. Great way to get a
| bunch of extremely underpowered Windows laptops or Android
| tablets. Terrible computing devices in general but if you're
| lucky it'll work well enough.
| ikari_pl wrote:
| not in Poland... :(
| QVVRP4nYz wrote:
| Allegro is full of refurb mini PCs, mostly Dells. It is
| complete computer for less than $100 [0], like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40697831 says, it is
| very hard to beat it in terms of value. That said it is
| much harder to get nice notebook/tablet, the wear and tear
| is very visible on screens/keyboards.
|
| [0] to my surprise the one I grabbed had an internal mono
| speaker(not beeper) somewhere in the case.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| Maybe hit up your local sketchy electronics store, VGA is still
| sold regularly as older gadgets still need it (One of my
| screens still uses VGA)
|
| I say sketchy as in no name brand anything, 100% chinesium
| electronics
| rnewme wrote:
| 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 from us, in
| pile of illegaly dumped trash. Mid sentence I stop, grab and
| smash the radio open on the curb, pull out the magnetic head
| and continue talking about the said magnetic head. Guys were
| bewildered.
|
| At other time I was watching a video about TV fresnel lens
| based lighting fixture, waiting for my date. After the date
| while taking the girl to the car I spotted a flat TV next to a
| dumpster box. Car was right across the street so I took the TV
| home. She quickly learned I'm no stranger to dumpster
| adventures. I had the light don't by the morning.
|
| Almost 2 years before that I needed a short (30cm max) ac plug
| with wire to fix something in the workshop, and I remembered
| seeing a broken electric tea pot behind our local dumpster
| while taking out the trash, it was exactly the right length of
| wire, and awh better than I needed.
|
| Recently, I was renovating something with my wife, and I needed
| a vacuum cleaner for the drywall sanding and other dust and
| spills related to that. Just few days after settingy eyes on
| karcher vacuum I find one in the dumpster as we were walking
| from the cinema back home. I opened it up next day and realized
| previous owner had thrown away brand new vacuum cleaner. They
| had not unpacked and set the filter, hair and piece of cloth
| got into the air sucking fins and got it stuck. I pulled the
| trash out, set the filter and voila!
|
| Over the last 10 years I had many more situations like that :)
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Unfortunately, some of use are not so lucky, at least I am
| not, haha.
|
| I got the idea to tinker with satellite dishes to make a
| simple radio telescope. I remember riding around and
| constantly seeing old DirectTV satellite dishes constantly on
| the side of the road for trash. Before this idea. So I
| figured, oh, I can easily get my hands on one. As soon as I
| committed to that project, I never saw a single satellite
| dish sitting by the street as I rode around.
| jetti wrote:
| If it makes you feel better you probably would not have
| been able to just pick up the dishes and use them without
| buying extra parts. I had DirectTV and when I cancelled
| they came and took the feed horn off the satellite dish but
| left the rest of the dish. I'm not sure how much a feed
| horn would cost but at least the dish wouldn't have been
| immediately usable. I also was interested in making a radio
| telescope but gave up when I realized DirectTV took that
| part of the dish
| smackeyacky wrote:
| My personal favourite save is a Bosch dishwasher that was
| kerbside. The drain motor was stuck, had melted plastic
| around the impeller. I have it in my workshop but it's better
| than the one in the house.
| quercusa wrote:
| Mine was pretty easy to fix - I was surprised how simple it
| was. IIRC, there's an inlet valve, a circulating/heater
| pump, and an exhaust pump.
| tomcam wrote:
| 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?
| interloxia wrote:
| Yes, according to a llm. He had a particularly touching
| moment repairing a broken drone he found with his son.
| Shortly after the story took a dark turn with the cancer
| diagnosis. As the condition worsened, he made an effort to
| document his projects, scavenging 3D printers, partly as a
| manual and partly as a diary. "The knowledge that my kids
| would have these memories and skills to carry forward, and
| perhaps pass on to their children, made the days feel
| meaningful."
|
| Not what I was expecting. Perhaps the model was not a
| reliable source.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| 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.)
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I am more suprised that the BMW outlasted the remote
| starter!
| r00fus wrote:
| > Over a decade later, the fob got destroyed in an
| unfortunate boating incident.
|
| I kind of feel you dropped the lede here. Need to hear this
| story as well.
| tivert wrote:
| >> Over a decade later, the fob got destroyed in an
| unfortunate boating incident.
|
| > Need to hear this story as well.
|
| I bet it's "dropped her keys into the lake." Perhaps
| after awkwardly balancing them a place that, in
| hindsight, should not have been used.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Nyet, comrade.
|
| She was at the front like some sort of living maidenhead
| while I leisurely rowed at the back with the entrenching
| tool that I kept in the car, one evening at an outdoor
| music festival somewhere in the Midwest. It was all very
| beautiful; the girl was beautiful, the sky was beautiful,
| the music was beautiful, and the place itself was
| beautiful; everything was approximately perfect. There
| was such a profound feeling of _rightness_ as the sun
| set, and I wished it would never end.
|
| Except: I had to pee.
|
| So I stood up to take care of that and the stolen canoe
| simply went sideways. My entrenching tool disappeared
| (along with one of my sandals, and the boat itself), the
| girl went for a swim, and most importantly my key fob got
| drenched.
|
| We swam to the nearest shore and hiked back through the
| dense young trees and brush using the flashlight on my
| Galaxy S5.
|
| Once we got back to camp, the phone died for real.
|
| It was all very much a bummer in a great number of ways.
|
| The next day some kids there found and recovered the boat
| and my missing sandal.
|
| We didn't make it, she and I. But several months later,
| that dead S5 came back to life like nothing had ever
| happened.
|
| (Don't do drugs, kids. Maybe.)
| RF_Savage wrote:
| Exactly this, one has to keep their eyes open and give luck a
| chance to happen.
| Idesmi wrote:
| Unfortunately, where I live, people bring their trash to the
| dumpster. And it's illegal to take stuff out of it...
| Zetaphor wrote:
| Is the girl from the date with the TV now the wife?
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Someone had abandoned a vacuum cleaner identical to my own
| (10+ year old) model from a not so common make in the ground
| floor lobby of my apartment block. It was surreal walking
| past it for months, just sitting there alone in the corner.
|
| My own vacuum cleaner was missing an attachment, but I never
| touched the abandoned one because I wasn't sure whether it
| was _truly_ abandoned.
|
| A few weeks later I found the same cleaner had gone missing,
| checked the dumpster - yep, there it was. Fished it out and
| now I have a complete set of attachments again.
| stereo wrote:
| Are the girl from the flat TV date and your wife the same
| person though? :)
| qiqitori wrote:
| I think that applies to most cables, BTW. Always look in thrift
| stores first if you can afford to spend some of your time in
| exchange for reducing ewaste! (In Japan you're guaranteed to
| find boxes full of old and some new VGA cables at any Hard Off
| store.) If you don't have time but don't mind some time lag,
| you can buy used ones from ebay or similar. (E.g., search for
| 'vga cables lot')
| HelloImSteven wrote:
| I get most of my "old" tech by volunteering community computer
| refurbishing places. Good way to meet people and stock up on
| tech supplies at the same time!
| 3lit3krew wrote:
| 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.
| prmoustache wrote:
| In every city I lived there were either some local recycling
| facilities/organizations where you can buy old things dirt
| cheap. So not really found in the streets but easily findable.
|
| Also second hand market offer a lot of obsolete stuff for very
| little money.
| rjst01 wrote:
| 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 understand some of the reason it happens - it's not a great
| experience to buy a product and then be unable to start using
| it immediately because you don't have the right cables. And
| there are a lot of low-quality cables out there which might
| have the right connectors but not actually work - I bought at
| least 3 different 5m DP cables before I found one that reliably
| worked at 4K. But surely that can't justify the literal
| mountains of e-waste the practice creates.
|
| Sadly I don't think it'll ever change without regulation.
| yrro wrote:
| Printers stopped coming with a USB A-to-B cable many years
| ago. Who knew that the printer makers were in the right all
| along?
| xp84 wrote:
| Yes, and I think they did that for relatively cynical
| reasons -- as a handout to the Best Buys of the world who
| would then be able to attach a 90% margin "Printer cable"
| at $29.95 to your $50 Black Friday special inkjet.
|
| I suspect the reason why this didn't go on to become
| standard across all classes of device, is because since
| 2010 or so, the average or median margin on accessories has
| cratered thanks to Amazon Marketplace sellers. You could
| realistically end up needing to buy a Belkin $30 printer
| cable in 2005, unless you'd heard of Monoprice. Today by
| contrast if you just search Amazon for it, you'll have one
| for $4.94-$6.49 delivered within 2 days. If margins were
| still what they used to be on cables and stuff, I think
| you'd have a strong incentive for places like Amazon and
| Walmart to pressure suppliers to make cables a la carte
| (officially for environmental reasons, but also, for great
| profits, lol)
| forgotacc240419 wrote:
| A really bad one now is devices providing crappy power only
| usb micro cables, very often these will still have the 4 pin
| head. I've started instantly binning them to avoid situations
| where I need to transfer data and can only find these ones
| lying around
| rjmunro wrote:
| > 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.
| rjst01 wrote:
| 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.
| ale42 wrote:
| 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.
| lupire wrote:
| That's fine but it should be a standard for a entire
| class of products.
| ale42 wrote:
| Totally agree. Using something like USB-PD that has
| voltage negotiation on the wire might increase the price
| of some appliances (especially those that have just
| minimal electronics inside), but a standard connector
| (like just a barrel jack?) would already be nice thing!
| Vexs wrote:
| It's a bit silly IMO, but USB PD EPR _can_ support 24v
| and 48v- for charging laptops, I believe. The day I see a
| server rack with a pair of USBCs plugged into it is a far
| day off I hope though.
| ale42 wrote:
| Didn't know, thanks for the info... I still have to see a
| power supply capable of delivering those voltages on
| USB-C though. All the ones I've seen can output 5V, 12V
| and 19V.
| lopis wrote:
| 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.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Where I live I can only find discarded beer cans and (used)
| Costa Coffee cups, and inverted broken umbrellas, because its
| 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.
| speedbird wrote:
| Seem to remember xterm also did tektronix. Haven't looked at
| the source for 35 years / x11r5 but should be doable.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Any business with an IT department should be drowning in them.
| Monitors still ship with VGA cables even though they are rarely
| used. So if you know anyone in a smaller IT dept that doesn't
| have really draconian rules over assets they would be more than
| happy to give you a pile of them.
| jandrese wrote:
| Auction sites are amazing for stuff like this. IT departments
| are always trying to get rid of old cables.
|
| An example I found in like 2 minutes:
| https://www.govdeals.com/asset/22/22839
| dougg3 wrote:
| This is a really impressive project! It was a fun read. Thanks
| for sharing! I like this writing style.
|
| > As an aside, I try to create a dual-target build for all my
| embedded projects, with a native host build for rapid
| prototyping/debugging
|
| I find myself doing the same thing on my embedded projects,
| including at my job. I actually find myself using the PC build
| much more frequently than the hardware for my day-to-day work now
| that the hardware layer is stable and tested. More people should
| do this!
| jwells89 wrote:
| 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.
| bonaldi wrote:
| This is precisely what I want. 7.6 with all-day battery life in
| an ultralight would be heaven for me.
| rlawson wrote:
| Same! Just add in an easy way to print from the emulator!
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| And the display should be e-ink to go all the way from zen to
| Nirvana!
| j45 wrote:
| Awesome way to give kids their first computer and it can only do
| what it can do.
| layer8 wrote:
| The VGA interface is the most impressive part to me somehow.
| cellularmitosis wrote:
| Yeah, that's what sets the RP2040 apart from other micros. I
| think of it as being analogous to the recent advent of
| "software-defined radio" -- the RP2040's PIO are fast enough to
| allow for software-defined Composite video, software-defined
| VGA, software-defined DVI, software-defined USB, etc etc etc.
| askvictor wrote:
| What other micros are you talking about? STM32 can easily do
| it (I suspect that any ARM based micro can), and I've seen
| some vga libraries for ESP32. There's not much special about
| the RP2040 other than it's price and brand name.
| dfox wrote:
| On other typical 32b MCUs you end up doing this kind of
| bitbanging purely from software, while RP2040 has the PIO
| which is kind of programmable bitbanging accelerator.
| Similar hardware blocks in other MCUs are either single-
| purpose (think USART), or much more limited and mostly only
| found weird automotive parts.
| doubloon wrote:
| I spent two hours trying to get hello world working on
| stm32 , on a pi it takes two minutes. its about barrier to
| entry not about quality of hardware. Same thing when
| Arduino came out people was saying so what its just an avr
| or whatever.
| wds wrote:
| 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.
| sitkack wrote:
| If only the RP2040 supported SPI PSRAM!
| str3wer wrote:
| what about a esp32-s3?
| qiqitori wrote:
| The PicoGUS uses PIO to implement a PSRAM interface in order
| to store 1 MB of audio sample data:
| https://github.com/polpo/rp2040-psram
| sitkack wrote:
| That is cool, I'll give it a go. It could be made workable
| for something like a JIT or interpreter (like the
| MicroMac). Could it be added to the RP2040 address space
| and used as a native load store target?
|
| The neat thing about the ESP32 chips is you can extend
| their internal memory with external SPI PSRAM chips.
|
| https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/product-files/4677/4677_esp-
| ps...
| sitkack wrote:
| Using QSPI RAM with RP2040's SSI in read-write mode
| http://dmitry.gr/?r=06.%20Thoughts&proj=10.%20RomRam
| mistyvales wrote:
| Want! Looks like fun.
| everyone wrote:
| 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.
| ido wrote:
| You can use GitHub actions to build to mac (and I assume iOS as
| well).
| krallja wrote:
| https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/
| bananskalshalk wrote:
| 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
| rbanffy wrote:
| Now I'm thinking about the creative misuse of (non-existing)
| technology.
|
| From the numbering scheme, the "4" in "RP2040" is log2(ram/16K).
| If we wanted to emulate a Lisa, we'd need 1MB of RAM, which would
| mean, at least, an RP2060 chip (log2(1024/16) = 6) or, more
| comfortably, an RP4x70 or RP2x80). Those parts, unfortunately,
| don't exist yet. Maybe they get inspired with their IPO and start
| making those parts.
| benob wrote:
| How about the same thing on a 68K emulated with an FPGA? (ok it
| will probably cost more than 5 pounds)
| rbanffy wrote:
| Unless you want cycle-accurate interfaces, it's pointless.
| Software can provide more than good enough performance and be a
| lot more flexible at that.
|
| As microcontrollers get faster, the cycle-accurate timing
| becomes less relevant, as you can still match external timings
| with software and have the support of an RTOS to help with
| that.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| What about power consumption? Could you have a tiny Mac which
| runs approximately forever on a single charge?
| rbanffy wrote:
| I imagine the power consumption of the compute part would
| be dwarfed by the display in any case.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I was imagining you'd still plug it into an external
| display. I guess you could fairly argue that defeats the
| purpose of a battery, though...
|
| Although, it might be cool with e-ink, low refresh rate
| notwithstanding.
| roywashere wrote:
| Power consumption is rather tiny I guess, but you would
| still want a screen!
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's a shame monitors don't provide 5V from pin9 of the VGA
| connector... Would be nice to be able to power things from the
| monitor connection. IIRC, SCART provides +9V.
| dfox wrote:
| Pin 9 is there to power the EEPROM in the monitor fromthe
| computer even when the monitor is turned off, so monitors
| providing 5V there would lead to same kind of problems as there
| are with DisplayPort pin 20 and cheap cables that connect this
| pin through (which would be correct for DP 1.0, but there are
| no DP 1.0 products).
| rbanffy wrote:
| Exactly. Back then we didn't imagine we would want to power a
| small dongle out of a monitor port.
|
| Sadly, when people invented HDMI, that was a lot more
| obvious.
| jdblair wrote:
| I wondered if anyone had written an IWM simulator, and I didn't
| find one, but I did find this FPGA project:
|
| https://www.bigmessowires.com/2017/12/07/fpga-based-disk-con...
| tieze wrote:
| Somewhat related, there's a MiSTer implementation of the Apple
| II: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Apple-II_MiSTer
| thristian wrote:
| Someone's trying to reverse-engineer the IWM, but they have not
| yet quite succeeded: https://www.applefritter.com/content/iwm-
| reverse-engineering
| jdblair wrote:
| Found this in that same thread, an IWM implementation in
| MAME: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/devices
| /mach...
| chuckadams wrote:
| > (Do you find "Pico Micro Mac" doesn't really scan? I didn't
| think this taxonomy through, did I?)
|
| I think "Atto Mac" rolls off the tongue nicely.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| What about every computer up to the 90s for ~10EUR of hardware to
| house inside of an existing keyboard?
|
| (or your subset of favorites)
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| ...or add such functionality to a USB hub ;)
| dflock wrote:
| You can do this with a Rasberry Pi 400, no problem. I have one
| running https://retropie.org.uk/ and it works great.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| a Rasberry Pi 400 is ~90EUR
| dflock wrote:
| Yep! Suuper nice though!
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| I guess Lemmings, After Dark and The Cycles would work there?
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Also cool would be to compile and run this emulator on a standard
| Raspberry Pi under a RTOS.
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