Super Tiny 3D Printed PC Pays Homage To Retro Desktops And Plays Doom
You know, 3D printed houses are cool and all, but a do-it-yourself (DIY) "designer and maker of things" and "3D printing tinkerer" has concocted a delightfully nostalgic project that will appeal to anyone with fond memories of playing with PCs back in the 1990s. His name is Salim Benbouziyane, and to oversimplify his project, he essentially 3D printed a miniature desktop PC that's a throwback to those old grayish and beige systems from yesteryear, but his contraption is no trinket. It's a working system, complete with a display.
Having started out myself on a Commodore 64 (not to generate AI images, as they're apparently capable of if you're patient...very patient) before really cutting my teeth on x86 systems in the 386 and 486 era, this is the kind of project that catches my attention. Those were simpler times, back when the race to 1GHz superseded a shift to multi-core computing and immensely power discrete graphics solutions as we know them today. Those beige boxes also had a penchant for claiming sacrificial drops of blood due to sharp edges on the chassis.
For this project, Benbouziyane wanted to put his 3D printing skills to work with a nostalgic miniature PC that is easily recognizable as being from that era. He also wanted it to be functional. To do that, he sourced a 4-inch capacitive IPS touch screen with a 720x720 resolution on Amazon. Benbouziyane also made it a goal to replicate the LED bits that adorned rectangular cases from the 1990s.
The heart of the system is a Raspberry PI 4 single-board computer (SBC) with a custom add-on board soldered on to distribute power.
"I printed all the enclosure parts (at 50-micron resolution) on the Ultra-Craft Reflex from Heygears using the PAU10 Resin. However, any resin printer with decent dimensional accuracy will do. I tried to support the parts in a way that reduces post-processing and ensures minimal to no supports on the visible sides," Benbouziyane explains.
Beyond just 3D printing the chassis, however, there was some careful post-processing that went into this project, such as wet sanding, priming, and painting. It's clear that a lot of care and attention when into making a replica desktop from the 1990s and early 2000s, and the end result looks fantastic.
It's a working system, too, and not just a decorative piece. While Benbouziyane didn't offer up much details in the way of emulated performance, he does show the PC booting Windows XP and loading retro games like Doom and Prince of Persia. He also did the modding community a solid by detailing the project in a worklog and posting the software bits on GitHub.
Fist-bump to PCGamer for spotting this project.
