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A project log for Macintosh SAO

It's the 40th anniversary of the original Macintosh. Why not recapture the magic in an SAO?

aaronAaron 06/03/2024 at 17:470 Comments

Supercon 2023 was my first supercon, and it was quite a lot of fun. Like many people I was delighted by the weird variety of SAOs†. I was especially inspired by Tom Nardi's Cyberdeck SAO. The integration of the OLED display made it super fun. I wanted to make my own. 

2024 happens to be the 40th anniversary of the original Macintosh. If you're an 80s child like me, take a moment to stare off into the distance with a look of shock. Back to the project! With that milestone in mind, I thought I would make an SAO that looked like an original Mac and I could put an OLED screen on it and display some fun stuff. 

This idea has been bolstered by two hardware finds: 

The display is the same aspect ratio as the original make (1/8th the resolution) and uses the commonly available SSD1306 driver. The microcontroller is $0.30/pc, runs at 48Mhz, and has an accessible Arduino ecosystem available to it. This makes it super easy to get started.

Additionally, both JLCPCB and PCBWay now offer full color printing on their PCB production. I haven't committed to it yet, but if I wanted to really match the beige color of the original Mac, I could do it.

While I await some development boards for the MCU, I'm developing some drawing methods. I have to adapter the common elements to the resolution of the display, so I can't quite make it a Mac, but I hope to evoke the feeling of the original Mac.

The showman in me is always trying to keep things a secret, and let it all be for the big reveal. In the spirit of open-source and open-ness, I'm publishing the project here, and hopefully as-I-build-it. 

† I prefer to say shoddy-add-on, but acknowledge what the commonly accepted acronym is.

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