Retro Apple emulator ported to $60 ESP32 microcontroller-powered touchscreen tablet — supports Mac OS8.1 and a virtual MC68040 CPU in major emulation leap

Retro Apple emulator ported to $60 ESP32 microcontroller-powered touchscreen tablet — supports Mac OS8.1 and a virtual MC68040 CPU in major emulation leap

Use the touch screen or plug in USB peripherals to interact with this tiny portable AiO Mac classic.

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(Image credit: amcchord ) Share Share by: Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Flipboard Share this article Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google A new emulator makes running classic Apple Macintosh 68K software a breeze on a cheap, portable, IoT development kit. Developer amcchord has ported the popular Basilisk II Mac emulator to the ESP32-P4 / M5Stack Tab5 ($60). The device name gives away that this is a small (5-inch) tablet that relies on an ESP32-P4 SoC for horsepower. We’ve seen 68K Mac emulation on microcontrollers before, but as Hackaday points out , this represents a major step forward in performance on one of these tiny SoCs. In brief, its RISC CPU is capable of delivering 68040 Mac-level computing in OS8.1.

This ESP32-P4 / M5Stack Tab5 port of Basilisk II is particularly appealing for Mac emulation tinkerers, as it is quite a well-rounded platform. It is a tablet , and can be used as such in the emulator, with its native touch functionality replacing mouse interactivity. In computer terms, it becomes almost a touch-enabled All-in-One, with your keyboard/mouse of choice attached via USB.

First-decade Apple Macs were also most famously represented by All-in-One designs with tiny screens (9-inch 512×342 pixel mono displays). In comparison, the Tab5’s 2x scaled 640×360 resolution 8-bit color output piped to the 5-inch 1280×720 IPS touchscreen could challenge your near vision.

Tiny386 emulator turns tiny microcontroller into a full i386 PC

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