Stealth Mac Portable Case Mod

[RolandJuno]

Hi folks! New to Tinker Different but long time reader. I get so much good information from this forum I thought I'd join and try to give back.

For my first post, I wanted to share a project that I worked on last year.

I've had a Mac Portable for several years that I just couldn't bring up to working status. Feeling defeated, I decided to mod it into a working computer with the help of a Raspberry Pi and some spare parts. I was also inspired by the work of Kevin Noki who brought the "FlatMac" to life and included a working floppy disk.

The mod is 100% non-destructive and completely reversible. It uses the original keyboard and trackball and a LCD from a broken iPad. My blog post details my build and the software I used to make this all happen, including the patches to MiniVMac and the Python wrapper I hacked up to get floppy disk insert and eject to work.

I hope you find it an informative and inspiring read.

» Stealth Macintosh Portable Case Mod

Cheers!

 

[bakkus]

This looks SO good. I believe I've seen bits of this project elsewhere on the 'net - Mastodon maybe?
At any rate and impressive mod and a perfect use for a non-working Portable shell.

 

[JDW]

@RolandJuno
Thanks for participating in the forum. As a 5126 owner, I loved reading your detailed writeup!
And I think your avatar is pretty great too.

 

[RolandJuno]

This looks SO good. I believe I've seen bits of this project elsewhere on the 'net - Mastodon maybe?
At any rate and impressive mod and a perfect use for a non-working Portable shell.

Thank you! Yes, I posted this on Mastodon last year as I was working on each part of the portable. It's supper helpful when I get stuck to ask the collective #RetroComputing group knowledge (like fixing the Portable trackball).

 

[RolandJuno]

@RolandJuno
Thanks for participating in the forum. As a 5126 owner, I loved reading your detailed writeup!
And I think your avatar is pretty great too.

Thanks, happy you liked it. I hope it helps someone else in their build. I'm especially interested to see if anyone makes better mods to MiniVMac to handle floppy disks seamlessly.

In the future, I hope there's a way I can use the original LCD display from the 5120 with the Raspberry Pi. I think that would look incredible.