Turn a Maclock alarm clock into a working Mac with a Raspberry Pi Zero.
What is it? ⬪ Shopping list ⬪ Hardware build ⬪ Software install ⬪ Donate
I recorded a full build video that you can watch here.
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 real 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.
- Maclock
- Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
- Waveshare 2.8 inch IPS LCD
- Adafruit PAM8302 audio amp + small speaker
- 3D printed screen bezel
- Macintosh Mini breakout board — for brightness, buttons, and sound. Order from PCBway.
- MicroUSB to USB-A female cable — to add a USB port to the back. Choose
Color: OTGV8DO-AFH.
Follow the Maclock hardware guide to assemble the Macintosh Mini. I also recorded a walkthrough video that goes into much more detail than the written guide.
-
Flash the OS. Install Raspberry Pi OS (Lite) 64-bit onto an SD card.
-
Bring your own Mac OS. Copy a Mac OS disk image and a ROM file to the Pi — the installer auto-discovers them in
$HOME. Two emulators are offered (it defaults to Basilisk II):- Basilisk II — a 68k Mac running System 7.0–8.5. Fastest option on the Pi Zero 2 W. Needs a 512 KB or 1 MB 68k ROM (Mac IIci / Quadra — try searching online for
064DC91D) and a disk image. - SheepShaver — PowerPC running Mac OS 8.1+. Needs the 4 MB PowerPC ROM and a disk image. Choose this only if you need PPC-era software — it's very slow on a Pi Zero.
Rename your ROM file to
ROM(no extension). Disk images are readily available online; I recommend the BlueSCSI image library.Disk images that work: any raw hard-disk image —
.hda,.img,.dsk,.hfv,.vhd(the extension doesn't matter) — and Apple.sparsebundle. Don't work:.dmg,.image/.smi,.toast, or anything still zipped (.zip/.sit).scp ROM yourdisk.hda <user>@<pi_ip>:~/
- Basilisk II — a 68k Mac running System 7.0–8.5. Fastest option on the Pi Zero 2 W. Needs a 512 KB or 1 MB 68k ROM (Mac IIci / Quadra — try searching online for
-
Run the installer. SSH into the Pi and run:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wr/macintosh-mini/main/setup.sh | bash -
The script reboots your Pi when done, and it should Just Work™️.
The Pi boots straight into the Mac. A few controls:
- Reset button (GPIO 26): a single press restarts the emulator; a double press quits to a Pi shell prompt.
- Shut Down from inside Mac OS (Special → Shut Down) quits to the Pi prompt; Restart reboots the Mac in place; a crash auto-reboots.
macintosh— run this from the prompt to boot the Mac again.- Networking works out of the box (slirp NAT). In the Mac, set TCP/IP to DHCP.
Re-run the installer any time to update an existing install — it keeps your disk image and settings. To switch emulator, pick the other one (Basilisk II ⇄ SheepShaver); each core's prefs are preserved.
Prefer to do it by hand? Every step the script runs is documented:
Open a GitHub issue — happy to help.
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.
While this project is free and open source, donations are deeply appreciated, and make ongoing development and support possible. Donate now
Copyright © 2026 Wells Riley. The maclock-pcb/ PCB design is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The rest of the repository is published as-is for personal, non-commercial use.