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Classic Macintosh Receives Trendy ePaper Conversion
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Classic computer systems are true collectors’ objects, so we don’t condone hacking them aside. However generally the unique electronics are past restore or lacking altogether. In such a case, we help modification to convey new life to those retro beauties. Such was the case for Dave Luna, who added an enormous ePaper show to a Macintosh Traditional II shell.
The Traditional II was the final Macintosh (and Apple pc typically) to launch with a black-and-white display. So this 16-color grayscale ePaper show seems to be proper at house rather than the unique cathode-ray tube. The display comes from Waveshare and is a big 9.7” mannequin with a decision of 1200×825, making it only a tad wider than a standard 4:3 facet ratio monitor. Waveshare offers a HAT for Raspberry Pi computer systems to make video output simple and that’s what Luna selected to make use of for this mission.
With the entire unique digital parts lacking, there was tons of house obtainable inside the Traditional II shell for a Raspberry Pi 3 Mannequin B single-board pc, the Waveshare HAT, and even a pair of powered Acer USB audio system. An Arduino Micro board acts as an adapter between the Raspberry Pi’s USB port and the unique keyboard and mouse. These initially linked to the Apple Desktop Bus, however a TMK Arduino library handles the interpretation to allow them to hook up with any fashionable pc as USB HID peripherals.
Luna’s main function for this transformed Traditional II is displaying household photographs. He wrote a customized Python script with a GUI that mimics the Macintosh desktop and exhibits every photograph in a window. However Luna selected a novel technique to get the photographs to the pc. These photographs reside in a household Google Photographs album and Luna didn’t wish to fiddle with the Google Photographs API. As an alternative, he linked a Chromecast to the Raspberry Pi’s digital camera port via a particular Waveshare adapter. An HDMI splitter strips the usual copy safety from the video sign and the Python script captures stills from the feed because the Chromecast runs in ambient mode.
That’s a fairly convoluted option to show a photograph album, but it surely works. The Traditional II can even act as a easy digital clock if Luna will get bored with photographs of his household.
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