Macintosh Mini

Turn a Maclock alarm clock into a working Mac with a Raspberry Pi Zero.

What is it? ⬪ Shopping list ⬪ Hardware build ⬪ Software install ⬪ Donate

_{I recorded a full build video that you can watch here.}

---

What is it?

A Maclock is a cheap alarm clock built into a shockingly accurate miniature Macintosh shell. This project guts one and rebuilds it around a Raspberry Pi Zero running a real 68k or PowerPC emulator, so the tiny Mac actually boots System 7, plays the startup chime, and runs vintage software. Buttons, brightness, sound, wi-fi, bluetooth, and battery all work.

Shopping List

• Maclock
• Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
• Waveshare 2.8 inch IPS LCD
• Adafruit PAM8302 audio amp + small speaker
• 3D printed screen bezel
• Macintosh Mini breakout board — for brightness, buttons, and sound. Order from PCBway.
• MicroUSB to USB-A female cable — to add a USB port to the back. Choose Color: OTGV8DO-AFH.

Hardware Build

Follow the Maclock hardware guide to assemble the Macintosh Mini. I also recorded a walkthrough video that goes into much more detail than the written guide.

Software — Quick Install

1. Flash the OS. Install Raspberry Pi OS (Lite) 64-bit onto an SD card.

2. Bring your own Mac OS. Copy a Mac OS disk image and a ROM file to the Pi — the installer auto-discovers them in $HOME. Two emulators are offered (it defaults to Basilisk II):

   • Basilisk II — a 68k Mac running System 7.0–8.5. Fastest option on the Pi Zero 2 W. Needs a 512 KB or 1 MB 68k ROM (Mac IIci / Quadra — try searching online for 064DC91D) and a disk image.
   • SheepShaver — PowerPC running Mac OS 8.1+. Needs the 4 MB PowerPC ROM and a disk image. Choose this only if you need PPC-era software — it's very slow on a Pi Zero.

   Rename your ROM file to ROM (no extension). Disk images are readily available online; I recommend the BlueSCSI image library.

   Disk images that work: any raw hard-disk image — .hda, .img, .dsk, .hfv, .vhd (the extension doesn't matter) — and Apple .sparsebundle. Don't work: .dmg, .image / .smi, .toast, or anything still zipped (.zip / .sit).

   scp ROM yourdisk.hda <user>@<pi_ip>:~/

3. Run the installer. SSH into the Pi and run:

   curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wr/macintosh-mini/main/setup.sh | bash

4. The script reboots your Pi when done, and it should Just Work™️.

Using it

The Pi boots straight into the Mac. A few controls:

• Reset button (GPIO 26): a single press restarts the emulator; a double press quits to a Pi shell prompt.
• Shut Down from inside Mac OS (Special → Shut Down) quits to the Pi prompt; Restart reboots the Mac in place; a crash auto-reboots.
• macintosh — run this from the prompt to boot the Mac again.
• Networking works out of the box (slirp NAT). In the Mac, set TCP/IP to DHCP.

Re-run the installer any time to update an existing install — it keeps your disk image and settings. To switch emulator, pick the other one (Basilisk II ⇄ SheepShaver); each core's prefs are preserved.

The software — manual install

Prefer to do it by hand? Every step the script runs is documented:

• Maclock hardware guide
• Basilisk II install guide
• SheepShaver install guide

Getting help

Open a GitHub issue — happy to help.

Credits

Startup chimes and crash sounds are mirrored from D. Schaub's Apple Sounds collection at https://froods.ca/~dschaub/sound.html. All sounds are © Apple, Inc.

Donate

While this project is free and open source, donations are deeply appreciated, and make ongoing development and support possible. Donate now

License

Copyright © 2026 Wells Riley. The maclock-pcb/ PCB design is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The rest of the repository is published as-is for personal, non-commercial use.