The original Macintosh 128K is a foundational product in the history of computing. Marketed with one of the most iconic commercials of all time and setting the precedent for Steve Jobs’ trailblazing career with Apple, there are few computers as iconic or as important. But for all of its importance, the Macintosh was expensive: retailing at $2,495 (which is close to about $7,500 these dates).
Want to know how far technology has come between 1984 and 2024? A $7,500 computer can be replicated for $7. All it took was 40 years.
Macintosh emulation on Raspberry Pi Pico
British Mac enthusiast Matt Evans broke down his process on his axio.ms blog: explaining how he transformed a Raspberry Pi Pico into a competent Macintosh emulation. For those unfamiliar, the Raspberry Pi is a tiny single-board computer range that can be used in a number of applications as a highly competent yet compact unit. The Pico variant is one dedicated to computing, with improved RAM and memory over the base Raspberry Pi. So how well does it run the nearly 40-year-old Macintosh 128K?
Evans breaks down his schematic in great detail, highlighting how he familiarized himself with the Macintosh operating system via infinitemac.org, a software emulator that has desktop versions of the original Macintosh OS (it goes without saying, you can run the Macintosh 128K on machines upwards of $7). Evans highlights that whilst he enjoys building emulators, it wasn’t his primary objective when creating his MicroMac – though he ended up having to regardless.
At the risk of demeaning Evans’ effort, his process was fairly straightforward: most of the schematics for the Macintosh 128K are available online via sites such as vintageapple.org, and one of the major criticisms of the Apple PC was its lack of third-party functionality. Therefore, programming in responses and building the emulator went well. Problems arose with another infamous component of the Macintosh, however: the Integrated Woz Machine. The single-chip logic controller that the Macintosh ran on was a time-consuming and cumbersome process before Evans was even able to generate the UI.
Once the MicroMac was up-and-running, it wasn’t perfect, however. MacPaint, one of the three apps the Macintosh was packaged with, simply wouldn’t work due to a lack of memory. It’s far from a failure, however: recreating one of the most iconic computers of all time on a device barely the size of a chocolate bar is a considerable achievement, and it serves as a benchmark for not only Evans’ engineering excellence, but for the progress PCs have made in the past 40 years. The fact that the once cutting-edge Macintosh can be recreated for a fraction of the space and a fraction of the cost (Evans even chanced upon a discarded VGA cable, keeping the cost minimal) isn’t an insult to the Macintosh, but a commendation to Raspberry Pi.
Final thoughts
It’s also a great highlighting of the power of the internet: given that most original Macintosh computers are museum pieces now, the fact that information on their internal specifications are freely available shows the brilliant democratization of information that a simple Google can provide. Though Steve Jobs – whose obsession with a closed system meant that the Macintosh 128K was a mystery even to some of its developers – is likely rolling in his grave at the prospect.
