A classic Macintosh on a Raspberry Pi

RPi-Mac turns a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W into a classic 68k Macintosh. Flash an SD card, power on, and the Pi boots straight into a Quadra-class Mac — grey checkerboard, Happy Mac, desktop. No visible Linux anywhere.

Grab a ready-made image below — there is one for HDMI screens and one preconfigured for the Waveshare 2.8″ DPI LCD — or use the SD Card Builder to compose your own: pick the Mac OS disk images and install CDs you want on the card, choose your display, and bake in your WiFi settings, so the Mac is on the network the first time it boots.

Every image boots Mac OS 8.1, with a System 7.5 disk included on the card (install it any time from the Mac's web control panel) and a System 7.5.3 install CD attached for recovery. Pick the flavour that matches your screen — that is the only difference between them:

• HDMI — for TVs and monitors. Plug in, flash, boot.
• Waveshare 2.8″ DPI LCD — preconfigured for that panel (including its touchscreen), ready to go with no editing. The classic "Mac Clock on the desk" build.

After flashing

1. Flash with Raspberry Pi Imager ("Use custom") or balenaEtcher, onto an 8 GB or larger card. Skip the Imager's OS customisation step — the image manages its own users and WiFi.
2. For WiFi: open mac.txt on the bootfs partition (visible from any computer) and fill in WIFI_SSID / WIFI_PASS. The stock images ship without WiFi configured — use the SD Card Builder instead if you want it baked in. Display and rotation can be changed in the same file.
3. Boot the Pi. The first boot takes a few extra minutes: the filesystem grows to fill the card and the compressed Mac OS 8 system disk is unpacked (progress appears on the boot screen), with one automatic reboot along the way.