One day, I’d like to make an emulated original Mac 512 using a Raspberry Pi Pico, like Matt Evans did.
If I do that, I could just buy a pre-made board from Joe’s Computer Museum. But I’m not delighted about the way he has the pico sticks out from the side of his board. I’d rather it sat on top (or underneath), like a regular Pico hat.
I could attempt to roll my own using something like this breakout board, but that’d be a bit of a challenge for my fairly modest soldering skills.
So another option would be to design my own custom board using something like DipTrace, and have one or two made up using something like OurPCB or DigiKey (or Rush PCB, but they don’t have online ordering in quite the same way).
UPDATE - apparently JCM’s prototype had the Pico sticking out looking ugly, but the ones he’s selling are beautiful. With his board, the Pico, and the microSD hat (if you want one) all piled neatly on top of each other.
So I could just buy that, and it’d be fine. But of course it doesn’t include a monitor, and it’s not in a case (unless I build one myself). And … well, it wouldn’t LOOK like an early mac, with the monitor built in.
Also - it’s only $25 USD but it’s another $50 USD for postage down under. So around $125 AUD in total.
So now I’m looking at this instructables post which looks prety much like a 1/3 scale Mac. Including internal monitor. And even an insertable “floppy disk” (actually a microSD card).
It uses a Pi Zero not a Pi Pico, but they’re only $30 AUD (for the Zero 2W) or $25 AUD (for the older Zero W). Which is not much really, compared with the cost of all the other parts…
… and the cost of buying a 3D printer. ;-)