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

---

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, on my site, 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, or skip it: the installer offers our Mac OS 8.1 disk

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 your disk image, if you have one, 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.

---

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, the bezel and the USB port jig): 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.