When you think of a modern gaming PC you probably think of a tower unit, with a side window and all sorts of glaring RGB. However, gaming PCs in the '90s were a lot different. Back then you got a beige box of a monitor, sitting on top of a beige box of a desktop unit, and you were grateful for it.
This 3D printed miniature gaming PC gives me such a wave of nostalgia for those halcyon days, I can almost smell the plastic casing. I mean, just look at it. Those rounded lines. The weeny little lights. The miniature CD ROM/floppy drive combo. THOSE DECALS! It's my childhood distilled down to its tiniest form.
YouTuber Salim Benbouziyane set out to create a working miniature version of the ultimate '90s computer, after feeling a similar rush of nostalgia for the good old days of PCs (via Yanko Design). Unsurprisingly, under the hood is a Raspberry Pi 4 like many other miniature projects, but after that everything becomes a lot more custom.
For the screen, Benbouziyane picked a square 720 x 724 Waveshare panel, and masked the top and bottom to provide a 4:3 aspect ratio. For the light indicators, rather than simply installing a set of modern LEDs, light pipes were used to create an appropriately nostalgic glow. There's also a miniature working power button, and an SD card reader where the media drives would normally be. This required designing a custom PCB add-on for the Raspberry Pi.
The 3D printed chassis was hand sanded to create those smooth, rounded lines, and air-brushed with a custom colour to create the appropriate shade of off-white/beige. I'd highly recommend watching the full video above, as the level of attention to detail is simply staggering. Far from being a simple mock-up, Benbouziyane has gone to town on every detail possible to create something that not only looks like the cutest PC you'll ever see, but gets all the historical details right for ultimate accuracy.
There's even been the odd happy accident. The monitor wobbles on top of the chassis, which
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