Macintosh Mini

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

Build guide ⬪ Install the software ⬪ Buy a kit ⬪ Donate

⏵ Watch the full build on YouTube

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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 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.

Step 1: Build or buy one

The build guide covers everything from opening the clock to the first boot: parts, assembly, software, and troubleshooting.

You can buy a DIY kit or a finished build from my maker shop. Faster than shipping from China, and your purchase supports the continued development of this project.

Step 2: Install the software

You will need:

• A Mac ROM file (064DC91D is a common one to search for)
• A Mac OS disk image with System 7.0 to 8.5. The BlueSCSI image library has ready-made ones

Prepare the MicroSD card

1. Flash Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) to a microSD card with Raspberry Pi Imager. Set your Wi-Fi network and turn on SSH in its settings.

2. Rename your Mac ROM file to ROM, and copy it and a disk image to the Pi's home folder:

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

3. SSH into the Pi and run the install script. It asks a few questions, like which startup chime to play, then does the rest:

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

The Pi automatically restarts into Mac OS when it's done.

You can run the same command again to install future updates.

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Optional: If you want to skip the automatic script and install everything yourself, or see exactly what the script changes:

• Set up the Pi: display, audio, brightness dial and buttons.
• Install the emulator: Basilisk II or SheepShaver.

Getting help

Open a GitHub issue — I'm happy to help, and very responsive!

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.

• Hardware (the boards and the bezel): CERN-OHL-S-2.0
• Software (setup.sh and maclock-build/): GPL-3.0-or-later
• Everything else (docs, drawings, photos): CC BY-SA 4.0

The Mac chimes are Apple's and the display overlay is Waveshare's; neither is covered. REUSE.toml maps every file.