Very cool. I think this is probably the way forward for various types of retrocomputing now that original chassises are disintegrating due to aging plastics and parts are becoming more scarce.
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.
geerlingguy•4h ago
As you get into more and more modern designs, there are more high speed signals and the motherboards get increasingly more complex.
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!
whartung•3h ago
That’s alright though. SE/30 was Peak Macintosh anyway.
sneak•1m ago
The 9600/350 was a thing of beauty.
vondur•3h ago
Heck, I'd be happy with a board that had the power/emulation of a 68040 so we can run MacOS 7.6 and some of old apps from back in the day.
johnklos•2h ago
Considering that we've moved from wire wrapping to being able to design and order multi-layer circuit boards, and we've gone from 74 series and basic PALs to CPLDs and FPGAs that regular people can program, I don't think what tinkerers can do will hit any barriers any time soon.
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 :)
userbinator•1h ago
Fortunately for later CPUs, especially on the PC/x86 they are usually based on reference designs, and the amount of documentation available in electronic form much greater. Late 2000s is when they started closing up and being more secretive, and I'd consider that a greater concern.
redundantly•2h ago
I imagine FPGAs would be a great way forward for retro computing, just like it is for retro gaming.
bitwize•2h ago
Retrocomputing and retrogaming are going to get a boost from a hybrid approach: using uC boards like the Raspberry Pi Pico to emulate each individual component. You get timing accuracy that's close to FPGA, but at $5 a pop, the components are cheaper than an FPGA board would cost.
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
cosmic_cheese•2h ago
FPGAs hold a lot of promise, but as I understand have limits on performance and can be on the power hungry side which can preclude some later CPUs and make portable form factors impractical.
cosmic_cheese•4h ago
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.
geerlingguy•4h ago
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!
whartung•3h ago
sneak•1m ago
vondur•3h ago
johnklos•2h ago
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 :)
userbinator•1h ago
redundantly•2h ago
bitwize•2h ago
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
cosmic_cheese•2h ago
wmf•45m ago