ITXPlus: A ITX Sized Macintosh Plus Logicboard Reproduction
68kmla.org
68kmla.org
It’s a much higher bar to clear, but I’d love to see this treatment for some PPC 603/604, G3, and eventually G4 era Macs… I love the idea of building an ITX G4 cube.
Not that it can't be done, but the work to reproduce something made at the cutting edge in the 2000s feels like it'd be an order of magnitude harder than 70s/80s designs.
Though I'm always amazed what the retro communities will do to preserve the tech for future generations!
That’s one of the things that jumps out at me when I pull out my old PowerBook G3 and boot it into OS 9 on occasion: it feels incredibly responsive relative to modern counterparts, especially with an SSD removing the wait times that normally came with a spinning disk, despite it being only a tiny fraction as powerful.
The ability to recreate classic computing is wonderful, both in preservation of history and in making things available to people who hadn't even been born when these machines were new :)
The Front Side Bus of the Pentium III maxed out at 133 MHz, single transfer (and was often configured at 100 MHz for lower spec CPUs), and the AMD K6 was even slower. I don't have much PCB design experience, but my understanding is that 133MHz is quite achievable for hobbyists these days.
Things very quickly go off the rails after that.
The Connomore 64 is an example of a complete system built this way. I'm sure Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST clones will be incoming. https://github.com/c1570/Connomore64
We need to start making detailed 3D scans of parts. The original parts will degrade, but we can make accurate reproductions of those parts. It would be great if museums took part of that effort, even if for no other reason than having the historically relevant items all in one place.
The ergonomics of that first Mac design remain my favorite of any computer. Loved the keyboard, the screen even though it was black and white, and even the handle. It made carrying the computer remarkably easy. Would be awesome if I could experience it again without worrying about leaky batteries or exploded capacitors.
Talked to these guys at VCF East this year. They are total rockstars but man its expensive to do this stuff. We are talking well into 6 figures for just the molds and testing. Probably not even started production at that point. And doing it outside of China? Good luck.