IPad Finds New Home In Mac Classic

Who of us out there don’t have a spare iPad and Mac Classic kicking around? If you are one of those lucky folks then this project is for you. [site hirac] has made a pretty neat stand for an iPad made out of a Mac Classic case (translated). It just happens that the screens of the Mac Classic and iPad are pretty darn close in size. Although the screen size is similar, the resolution is not. The original Macintosh Classic had a black and white screen with a resolution of 512 × 342 pixels. The iPad’s resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels has 450% more pixels than the original Mac.

To get the iPad to fit correctly, the case had to be significantly modified. First, all of the internals of the Mac were removed, leaving just an empty case. The front panel of the case was removed and a slot on the left side is made. This slot helps to allow the iPad to slide into the Mac. On the inside of the front panel quite a few of injection molded supports were trimmed away for clearance. A slot was also cut in the left side of the rear case half. When the case is re-assembled, the slots in the front and rear halves provide a large enough hole for the iPad to fit through. Oddly, there are some plastic features on the front panel that are at just the right height to hold the iPad in the ideal location to line up with the screen cutout in the case.

All the case mod details well documented, in case you are itching to build one. This is a pretty neat project already but if we had to make any suggestions, it would be to add a docking connector and some integrated speakers. As the project is now, the iPad runs off battery power and the iPad speakers are facing into the case.

22 thoughts on “IPad Finds New Home In Mac Classic

    1. Oh my gosh. Well done!
      I don’t know how you’ve managed this with all the iPhones jumping out of long grass, iPads dropping from trees and macbooks stalking innocent PCs. These truly are terrifying times.

  1. whow, you succesfully wasted a piece of computer history for using it as a stand for a crapy iDevice which will die by hardware failure in an lower 2 digit number of month :/

    what a shame

  2. Thinking of doing something similar except I would use a replacement panel for an iPad Retina and hook it up to a mini-itx mainboard inside. My concern though is fitting the ipad screen inside the opening in the case. The original monitor was 9″ but had wide black borders. I imagine that this would make the 9.7″ ipad retina panel just a little too large. How is the actual fit of your ipad with the opening in the shell? Do you see the entire image or just nearly so?

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