UPDATE

Getting to work on the first molded plastic case. Here are some scale images of the original 128k Mac case and some handhelds for reference. Trying to decide if we should change the size of the screen opening in the miniMac to allow for the square IIIc screen, or crop off part of the IIIc screen so the lower third is hidden?

MINIMAC HARDWARE

The leaders of the miniMac project do not have a strong hardware background, so the development has proceeded much faster on the software side (although there is arguably MUCH more to do on the software side!). The first custom chassis is almost ready and we should have some pictures ready in the next week or two.

Until we have some pictures of the actual chassis, let's use an old San Diego Mac Users Group Mug to demonstrate our plans. It is roughly the same size as Prototype I will be:

The first prototype is being built from a Palm IIIc. We considered using an original Pilot 1000, thinking that would be more appropriate, but the color screen will appear much more like the original Mac monitor, so we will use the first color Palm. The IIIc does not have an expansion slot, so there will be no "disk drive" on the first prototype. We will try to add a keyboard port for a full size desktop keyboard, a power port on the rear to accept the power supply for recharging, and a serial port (we'll try to fit a "Mac Type" round serial port on there if we can).

We haven't decided yet on a device for prototype II. The point of PII is to add the disk drive (SD slot) and possibly to implement a mouse if we find a way to do it over the hotsync port (or IR?).

At this time we expect to complete the project by converting a Sony Clie NR-70 into a slightly larger miniMac with correct screen ratio, a scaled down keyboard (using the Clie thumb board), mouse and Memory Stick disk drive. Although the Memory Stick doesn't look as much like a floppy, but we feel it is appropriate considering the original Mac used a proprietary disk drive made by Sony (custom built just for Apple) that was incompatible with everything else at the time.

FUTURE

We might consider doing further development to reproduce later hardware and software. We would of course like to have some of the original Mac applications running on the miniMac, and maybe a later version of the Mac OS. We could turn a Visor into a Mac SE (it also had one expansion slot) or consider making an iMac or other note worthy machines... yes, we thought about building a Apple Message Pad out of a Palm... but that just seems wrong!