This Miniature 1990s PC With Raspberry Pi Inside Is The Perfect Retro Mod
A Redditor has shared a video showcasing an exquisitely made palm sized retro-PC. The ‘desktop’ looks very much like one of the beige machines we used to covet back in the 90s, alongside a vivid ‘Sony Trinitron’ CRT. However, the true scale of this design is shown by the placement of a penny, and we also see this cute ‘PC’ nestling on the Redditor’s palm.
Inside this tiny PC is a Raspberry Pi of some flavor. You will find that the Pi isn’t in the ‘Mini Tower’, though, it is situated inside the ‘desk’. Redditor TuckerPi shows the crafting of this miniature 90s computer in the video. We see he hollows out the desk in his workshop with a large forstner drill bit. The nice wooden desk (and actual system housing) is made from a chunk of mahogany, walnut, black walnut, or oak, according to an Etsy page set up to sell a limited number of these custom hand-made PCs.
Another mini tech marvel used to make this appealing 90s PC tribute is the screen. The ‘Sony Trinitron’ here uses a 1.67-inch diagonal LCD with an SPI interface. At such small dimensions, you don’t expect a lot of fine detail, and indeed this screen is just 160 x 128 pixels.
Of course, the mouse and keyboard on the desk are 3D printed dummies, like the system tower. So, how was the miniature 90s PC controlled? TuckerPi mentions that it has Bluetooth connectivity, so that’s probably the best/only way to use it.
In some portions of the video, it appears that this device is running Windows XP, but it seems to be just running an ‘attract mode’ video that can be anything the user wishes. Other portions of the screen appear to show it running Raspberry Pi OS and the Etsy sale page says users could run any custom looping video they wish, play SD-card movies on it, stream YouTube or Twitch, or play retro games on it (some games are shown in the demonstration).
