If you’ve been wondering what to do with the 3D printer Santa left under the tree for you this Christmas then why not build yourself a Mac/RPi hybrid? Noe Ruiz came up with the Mini Mac Pi idea earlier in the year; he designed a custom 3D printed case that looks like a miniature classic Mackintosh computer circa 1990. Inside he has mounted a Raspberry Pi model B (not B+) fitted with the PiTFT 2.8 inch 320 x 240 mini touch-screen display, a 6600 mA/h 3.7 V lithium-ion battery pack managed by a PowerBoost 500 charger unit which takes care of battery charging and generates the RPi’s 5 V supply.

It runs a version of the free and open-source Mini vMac which emulates booting into the Mac OS 7. This allows the machine to run the Mac desktop and classic software such as Mac Paint in addition to some of the more basic open-source Mac software.  Mini vMac is part of the Gryphel Project aimed at preserving the software which runs on early Macintosh computers made by Apple from 1984 to 1996 and which used Motorola processors.

The designer suggests the use of PLA filament to print the case although ABS is acceptable but there will be more chance of it warping. Find more information about the Mini Mac Pi here.