Damaged Pocket Computer Becomes Portable Linux Machine

November 28, 2025 by 43 Comments

The Sharp PC-G801 was an impressive little pocket computer when it debuted in 1988. However, in the year 2025, a Z80-compatible machine with just 8 kB of RAM is hardly much to get excited about. [shiura] decided to take one of these old machines and upgrade it into something more modern and useful.

The build maintains the best parts of the Sharp design — namely, the case and the keypad. The original circuit board has been entirely ripped out, and a custom PCB was designed to interface with the membrane keypad and host the new internals. [shiura] landed on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W to run the show. It’s a capable machine that runs Linux rather well and has wireless connectivity out of the box. It’s paired with an ESP32-S3 microcontroller that handles interfacing all the various parts of the original Sharp hardware. It also handles the connection to the 256×64 OLED display. The new setup can run in ESP32-only mode, where it acts as a classic RPN-style calculator. Alternatively, the Pi Zero can be powered up for a full-fat computing experience.

The result of this work is a great little cyberdeck that looks straight out of the 1980s, but with far more capability. We’ve seen a few of these old pocket computers pop up before, too.

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Die Cut Machine Makes Portable Metal Cuts

July 12, 2025 by 11 Comments

[Kevin Cheung] likes to upcycle old soda cans into — well — things. The metal is thin enough to cut by hand, but he’d started using a manual die-cutting machine, and it worked well. The problem? The machine was big and heavy, weighing well over 30 pounds. The solution was to get a lightweight die cutter. It worked better than expected, but [Kevin] really wanted it to be more portable, so he stripped it down and built the mechanism into a new case.

The video below isn’t quite a “how-to” video, but if you like watching someone handcraft something with a lot of skill, you’ll enjoy it. It also might give you ideas about how you could use one of these cutters, even if you don’t bother building a nice case for it.

We’ve seen cutters that use computer control, but they aren’t inexpensive. They will, however, make the same kind of cuts. But these manual die cutters are very inexpensive, and you simply have to find a way to make the die. You can easily make them for cutting paper, and, with the right materials, you can make the kind you see in [Kevin]’s video, too.

We have to admit, carrying the gizmo into a public place seemed to make a lot of people happy. So maybe portability is a good goal. But either way, you can have some fun with a machine like that.

If you want to cut paper, these work great. If you want paper to make the cuts, we have just the thing for you.

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A Portable M4 Mac Mini

May 16, 2025 by 29 Comments

The Mac mini is the closest to an Apple-based SBC you can get, so it lends itself to unusual portable computers. [Scott Yu-Jan] is back to tackle a portable build using the latest and greatest M4 mini.

[Yu-Jan] walks us through his thought process of how to maximize the portability of the system without all that tedious mucking about with setting up a separate keyboard, monitor, and the mini while on the go. With the more complicated electronics, the monitor risked tipping the keyboard over when attached, particularly since [Yu-Jan] isn’t a fan of batteries for his portables.

By affixing the Mac mini to the side of the keyboard, it makes the whole thing easier to slip into a bag without being overly thick. We get a peek into his iterative process as well when he evaluates the build and decides that the closing of the lid wasn’t what he was hoping for. By adding some TPU rests for the monitor to rest on in the closed position, he says it’s really brought the whole project up a notch. We certainly have had our own projects where one little detail really moves it from sketchy to polished, and we appreciate when makers clue us in on where that happened for them.

You may recognize [Yu-Jan] from our previous coverage of his older portable all-in-one Mac mini and this luggable version where he explains why he doesn’t like laptops. If you like your computers more stationary, how about some G4 iMacs with the newer internals from an M-series mini?

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Designing A Portable Mac Mini

March 25, 2025 by 8 Comments

When Apple first launched the Macintosh, it created a new sort of “Lunchbox” form factor that was relatively portable and very, very cool. Reminiscent of that is this neat portable Macintosh Mini, created by [Scott Yu-Jan].

[Scott] has created something along these lines before—putting an iPad dock on top of a Macintosh Studio to create a look vaguely reminiscent of the very first Macintosh computers. However, that build wasn’t portable—it wasn’t practical to build such a thing around the Macintosh Studio. In contrast, the Mac Mini is a lithe, lightweight thing that barely sups power—it’s much more suitable for a “luggable” computer.

The build relies on a 3D printed enclosure that wraps around the Mac Mini like a glove. Inside, there’s a chunky 20,800 mAh power bank with enough juice to run the computer for over three hours. Just like the original Mac, there’s a handle on top, too. The build’s main screen is actually an iPad Mini, hooked up to the Mac Mini. If you want to use it separately, it can be popped out just by pushing it via a cutout in the bottom of the enclosure.

[Scott] notes that it’s cool, but not exactly practical—it weighs seven pounds, mostly due to the weight of the heavy power bank. We’ve featured [Scott’s] stylish builds before, too, like this nice iPhone dock.

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Impossible WiFi On An Ancient Mac Portable

August 24, 2023 by 13 Comments

The Macintosh Portable was possibly one of the coolest computing devices to be seen with back at the end of the 1980s, providing as it did a Mac in a slightly nicer version of the hefty luggable portables of the day than the PC world could offer. Inside was a mere 68000, but it ran Mac OS system 6 and looked light years ahead of any comparable PC in doing so.

Back in 1989 it wasn’t even the norm for a computer to have built-in Ethernet, and WiFi was still a gleam in the eye of some Dutch engineers, so how has [Joshua Stein] managed to get his Mac Portable on a wireless network here in 2023? The answer contains a few surprises.

When seeing a WiFi upgrade for a classic retrocomputer the usual expectation is that it’s done by emulating a modem connection to the Internet over a serial port. But this wireless network card is a bit different, it’s a real network card capable of being used for much more than just connecting to the Internet.

We have to admit to not knowing that there were SCSI Ethernet interfaces back in the day, and it’s one of these that he’s created. He’s building on a decade’s work in producing disk emulators for the SCSI bus, and he’s taken the code for a Raspberry Pi Pico version and adapted the SCSI driver part to interface with the onboard WiFi on a Pico W. Altogether it’s a beautiful piece of work, and you can color us impressed.

PERSEUS-9, The Dual-6502 Portable Machine That Should Have Been

July 29, 2022 by 53 Comments

A question: does anyone who was around in the early days of the 8-bit computer revolution remember a dual-CPU 6502 portable machine like this one? Or just a dual-CPU machine? Or even just a reasonably portable computer? We don’t, but that begs a further question: if [Mitsuru Yamada] can build such a machine today with parts that were available in the era, why weren’t these a thing back then?

We’re not sure we have an answer to that question, but it just may be that nobody thought of it. Or, if they did, the idea of putting two expensive CPUs into a single machine was perhaps too exorbitant to take seriously. Regardless, the homemade mobile is another in a growing line of beautifully crafted machines in the PERSEUS line, all of which have a wonderfully similar look and feel.

For the PERSEUS-9, [Yamada-san] chose a weatherproof aluminum enclosure with just the right form-factor for a mobile computer, as well as a sturdy industrial look. Under the hood, there are two gorgeous wire-wrap boards, one of which is home to the 48-key keyboard and the 40×7 alphanumeric LED matrix display, while the other is a densely packed work of art holding the two 6502s and a host of other DIPs.

The machine is a combination of his PERSEUS-8 computer, his 6802 serial terminal, and the CI-2 floating point interpreter he built for the PERSEUS-8. A brief video of the assembly of this delightful machine is below. One of the many things about these builds that impress us is the precision with which the case is machined, apparently all by hand. How he managed to drill out all those holes for the keyboard without having one even slightly out of alignment without the aid of CNC is beyond us.

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Portable MRI Machine Comes To The Patient

May 8, 2020 by 41 Comments

To say that the process of installing a magnetic resonance imager in a hospital is a complex task is a serious understatement. Once the approval of regulators is obtained, a process that could take years, architects and engineers have to figure out where the massive machine can be installed. An MRI suite requires a sizable electrical service to be installed, reinforced floors to handle the massive weight of the magnet, and special shielding in the walls and ceiling. And once the millions have been spent and the whole thing is up and running, there are ongoing safety concerns when working around a gigantic magnet that can suck ferromagnetic objects into it at any time.

MRI studies can reveal details of diseases and injuries that no other imaging modality can match, which justifies the massive capital investments hospitals make to obtain them. But what if MRI scanners could be miniaturized? Is there something inherent in the technology that makes them so massive and so expensive that many institutions are priced out of the market? Or has technology advanced far enough that a truly portable MRI?

It turns out that yes, an inexpensive MRI scanner is not only possible, but can be made portable enough to wheel into a patient care room. It’s not without compromise, but such a device could make a huge impact on diagnostic medicine and extend MRI technologies into places far beyond the traditional hospital setting.

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