MARCHintosh 2026 Projects

eric · Thursday at 4:13 PM

It's that time again for #MARCHintosh!

Use this thread to capture and share them! If you see something or are working on something just reply below as well. If your project is bigger please feel free to make your own thread and tag it with MARCHintosh & MARCHintosh2026!

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2025 thread: https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/marchintosh-2025-projects.4174/

Mu0n · Thursday at 4:30 PM

Fresh C code for my old Mac Plus:

I did a proof of concept back in August 2025 or so:

I'll:

* Revisit and improve that code
* Establish a link between MIDI in and various sound destinations: spit back in MIDI out as low hanging fruit, but also send to the Sound Driver: square wave synth, 4 tone synth, free form synth
* Attempt polyphony when applicable (midi, 4 tone and freeform)
* Drive Studio Session instrument files
* Drive arbitrary aiff sound files (high shenanigan potential here)

**** Finally use Snow to code and immediately test all this in emulation, this saves so much program transfer time to real hardware after every compilation

When the code gets mature it'll pop there as an example app and a reusable library file:

GitHub - Mu0n/1bitdreammachine: Game programming API for 68000 Macintoshes, in particular the Mac Plus

Game programming API for 68000 Macintoshes, in particular the Mac Plus - Mu0n/1bitdreammachine

github.com

eric · Thursday at 4:37 PM

I've updated Snow to support LToUDP better (in nightly now). LToUDP allows you to bridge (with appropriate modern device as it's a modern protocol, such as a TashTalk) your emulator to a real network. I've also been adding LToUDP bridge to my fork of jrouter (a modern Apple Internet Router) - what this means is with these two items you can now get on GlobalTalk with Snow and bridge to a real Image Writer with a TashTalk, no retro hardware needed.

Some purists would say this is sacrilege but it's also fun.

Also Snow supports TCP/IP anyways using a DaynaPORT bridge now too so really LToUDP isn't nessisarily needed, but I needed something to test with for jrouter.

Also have one more Appletalk goodie coming soon.

tom_B · Thursday at 4:39 PM

maybe this is the marchintosh i'll finally button up my g3 molar mac

upgraded the CPU to a G4(thanks to Ryan/Everything Is Broken Garage)
upgraded RAM
PCI firewire/USB card
SSD
zip drive(thanks to @Ron's Computer Videos )
new flyback a couple of years ago

everything seems to be working smoothly with it, just needs to be tidied up and closed up

thecloud · Thursday at 6:28 PM

My #MARCHintosh project this year is called Simple Spooler -- think of it as the Simple Text of print spoolers. It's an application that runs on old Macs (System 6.0 up to 9.2.2) and lets you share your serial ImageWriter printer over the network, without needing an AppleTalk Option Card.

Currently it's working for printing to both the ImageWriter I and II, and should also work with an LQ though it's not yet been tested with a real one.

LaserWriter spooling support is partially done and working only with a specific version of the LW driver; will be striving to have it working well with all driver versions in March.

You can grab a pre-release copy on #GlobalTalk, from Puppet Head:Ken's Stuff:Simple Spooler 0.2: in the Cloudbusting zone.

alt_ · Thursday at 7:52 PM

Hello from Polish Amiga enthusiast, master of soldering iron, having an affair with a couple of Macs recently!

My first ever #MARCHintosh entry is a pretty hacky G3 upgrade of PowerMac 4400. Perhaps I'm the first to ever do it.

Having a parts donor board from Compaq MSA500 which ran on PowerPC 740L I decided to try and swap it in place of 603e in my PM4400.

The only issue was supplying correct voltage as the 740L requires 2.1V as opposed to 2.6V of the 603e. The solution was to bodge in voltage regulator from MSA500 board that is hardwired 2.1V regulator so no extra circuitry required.

To my surprise, the Mac happily booted with the 740L, first at 240MHz that I had set the 603e previously. Later, I experimented with bus and multiplier settings and managed to get it to work at it's rated speed of 300MHz, and finally at 50MHz bus, multiplier of 8x and 400MHz speed!

The performance is - as expected - excellent compared to 603e, especially given that the raw clock speed is doubled. The only (heavily) limiting factor is lack of backside cache, however the onboard L2 cache works (despite Gauge Pro showing it's absent) and provides some substantial performance boost.

Attached is .SIT with Norton System Info 6 results. The 300 and 400MHz run on 50MHz bus, with default 40MHz 4400 RAM timings. 350 runs on 50MHz bus and timings. The fact that 300 and 350 results are very close shows how the bus speed is critical in this system.

Can anyone send me System Info results for stock 4400/200? I forgot to run a test before upgrade...

Trash80toG4 · Thursday at 8:36 PM

I was planning to finish up my PowerPC Challenge'd MDD'03 setup to finally get an OS9 PortlyTower/G4 graphics workstation back into the rack for this.

However that's not nearly as exciting as the open air ATX chassis I recently found on Amazon. Most all ATX toys terminate at the side backplane insert, but this one has provision for a PSU at that point with room to spare. So I'll be re-booting a long somnolent project instead.

Trimmed up, it should tuck right in, replacing the Netra t's plastic standoff if not sitting directly atop it. Scheduled to arrive on March 1st!

PEx + Sun Netra t 1125 = Sun Macintosh 1125/4U

Metalworking aside, the computer part of the challenge will be getting it to boot up into 4U PEx/G4/800 mode. PEx board's tested thanks to a ROM SIMM recreation by my buddy @trag Really looking forward to testing the several accelerators I've collected along the way in the 22+- years I've had this lovely 9700 Prototype MoBo in my grubby little paws!

Arbystpossum · Thursday at 9:40 PM

I think I'm going to make my marchintosh project my recently acquired G3 iMac. It needs new speaker cones, and I want to install an exhaust fan in it somehow. Speaker cones might be tricky to find, and the exhaust fan might also. I want the fan to pull air out of the top, but if it's too close to the monitor tube inside then I'm afraid the fan might mess with the tube magnetically. After some time of being on, the top passively pours lava and the color black gets more and more red. I want to start with heat management because it's the most sensible, then the speakers. I could do a whole writeup with diagrams, but a bottom intake fan is out because the logic board separates the case into 2 quadrants, so it'll be far less effective.

jonschwenn · Thursday at 9:48 PM

My #MARCHintosh project lists include getting an ImageWriter II up and running and use Simple Spooler on an SE/30 to share it for printing. I also have ZZJ boosters for each SE/30 that I want to get installed.

I have some general projects to get OS's and software setup on my SE/30's and an eMate that I've been working on for the past year. Part of this includes having some benchmark tools running for comparisons before/after the booster install.

I end up having long running projects in some constant state of progress and use #MARCHintosh as a goal post. It's about enjoying finalized projects rather than doing the projects themselves

Trash80toG4 · Thursday at 9:57 PM

Neat stuff!

Arbystpossum said:
. . . recently acquired G3 iMac . . . want to install an exhaust fan in it . . . if it's too close to the monitor tube inside then I'm afraid the fan might mess with the tube magnetically.

Neat project. First thing that popped into my head was a cylindrical air duct to pull heat from next to the top vent and back out around to it, exiting the vent. That would let you place the fan anywhere you have available cubic around the path for smooth airflow and noise isolation.

Ron's Computer Videos · Thursday at 10:06 PM

Be sure to check out the #MARCHintosh 2026 kick off stream... this Saturday, February 28th 2026 at 7pm CST

Mu0n · Thursday at 10:40 PM

1st demo is up with a Snow dev environment:

phunguss · Friday at 12:53 AM

I have half a dozen beige boxes, but no working CRT monitors. But I do have some salvaged 12" and 14" iBook G4 LCD panels that I can get driver boards and 3D print frames to create some retro platinum displays for all those boxes.

Byte Knight · Friday at 2:28 AM

The Crow's Nest BBS, running Hermes II v3.1.1 on a Mac IIci with multiple wifi modems, is back again for #MARCHintosh 2026! What's new this year?

• Connect via GlobalTalk using only an AppleTalk connection!
• BBS in a Box volume 22 CD's are online.
• Phrack newsletters and ASCII art have been added to the G-Files section.

Full details on how to connect here: http://crowsnestbbs.ddns.net/cn/

XodiumLabs · Friday at 2:43 PM

Well, because the Satanicube didn’t get enough hate mail I’m taking it a step further with another Cube I happened into. This, THIS will cheese some people off.

i hope to have it a good bit of the way done for MARCHintosh.

Post by @xodiumlabs · 3 images

💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 0 · Because I like a good tease… Meet what I’m tentatively calling 2Satanic2Cube. Or “xo wonders if lightning can strike the same place twice”. Coming August 1st, 2026.

www.tumblr.com

EDIT: finally back on a real computer, cut the picture because it was borked. Check out the tumblr post though!

RolandJuno · Friday at 2:43 PM

This year, along side @thecloud, I wrote a virtual AppleTalk ImageWriter II printer in Python called Softserve. It shows up on your Ethernet network in the Chooser so you can print locally or even via GlobalTalk when you have an appropriate router. It can emulate a regular ImageWriter II as well as the wide ImageWriter LQ. It saves the print files and then automatically converts them to PDF for instant viewing (PDF viewing uses this ImageWriter CLI tool). In the next few days, I'll add an additional program that will let you send the print file to your actual ImageWriter II or LQ printer connected via serial. The program is written in Python and was tested on a Raspberry Pi. It's rough and ready but it works. You can find it in the Biosrhythm zone on GlobalTalk.

Huge thanks to @thecloud for the assistance in developing it in tandem with the Mac-based Simple Spooler project. It was really a lot of fun to write and I feel like I learned a lot about the AppleTalk protocol that I didn't know before.

Hope you find it useful!

Arbystpossum · Friday at 3:09 PM

XodiumLabs said:
Well, because the Satanicube didn’t get enough hate mail I’m taking it a step further with another Cube I happened into. This, THIS will cheese some people off.

i hope to have it a good bit of the way done for MARCHintosh.

Woah, what am I looking at? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm curious.

chasnah · Friday at 4:18 PM

I'm going to be working on repairing the Macs I got from an estate around Thanksgiving. Fixing a SE/30 with some corrosion damage on the frame and around the edge of the motherboard (Not from its own PRAM battery), recapping a IIci & IIsi, and looking over the software and documentation that came in the lot too.

scj312 · Saturday at 2:55 AM

I've never had a chance to play with Mac OS X Server NetBoot, so I plan to tinker with that this month! One abuse I intend to try is seeing if the CHRP-enabled versions System 7 can be NetBooted.

phunguss · Saturday at 6:05 AM

scj312 said:
I've never had a chance to play with Mac OS X Server NetBoot, so I plan to tinker with that this month! One abuse I intend to try is seeing if the CHRP-enabled versions System 7 can be NetBooted.

One thing we used in the education industry was DeployStudio, reimaging an entire classroom at a time.

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