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Random pickup, toy Powermac 5000 series(for American Girl dolls)

Torbar

Torbar

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Was at Goodwill yesterday and spotted this by the toys.  First saw it and thought it was one of those PC shaped alarm clocks and went to pick it up.  Then saw it had the Apple logo and said Macintosh on the front, and saw it was a Powermac 5000 design.  Was 4 bucks so I picked it up.   Brought it home, put in some AAA batteries, flipped the switch, and it showed a Mac OS desktop with a text document open about a trip to the planetarium.  I did some research, and turns out it was a toy that American Girl released for their dolls in the mid-late 90s.  They sell for 20+ dollars on ebay, so I think I did pretty well

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I have one too!  I found mine at a garage sale.  The best part is that clicking on the keyboard displays a text doc and clicking on the mouse displays a graphics doc - overall it is an excellent toy.  Better than any toy computer I have ever seen.  Glad to see there are some  other folks that have come across this item.

 
According to this the diagonal measure of the screen is 3.25 inches. What do you suppose the chances would be of fitting a small LCD screen like this into it? (To me the screen bezel looks a bit fat when I compare it to a photo of a real 5500, so if a 3.5" LCD would fit in the case it might not be a terrible thing to carve the hole out a bit more. There are also 2.8" LCDs, but I suspect that would be a little too dinky to look right.) Obviously it would be sort of amusing to cram some sort of tiny real computer into one.

 
Hmm, yeah, it looks like the screen is around the same size as that one you listed.  I may have to pop this open and see what the situation is like as far as space inside.  Maybe a pi zero or something could fit in it too

 
^ your idea has been taken :p

I actually saw one guy who modified one of the toys with a tiny color screen and a computer! It was running some sort of Mac Emulator...

 
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If you really wanted to one-up it there are 3.5" VGA-resolution displays, which would be far nicer than the TV resolution one I suggested. (And turned out to be the same one in the Hack-A-Day article.) Unfortunately they seem to be just a little more pricey.

(Although you may be able to well undercut that if you shopped around, it would of course be ridiculously expensive from a place that sells avionics equipment. What appears to be the same panel is only $41 on eBay, I imagine it's possible to find a small enough VGA or, better, HDMI driver board for less than $200...

Okay, here, $74 from AliExpress, matched with a VGA/AV controller board.

HDMI-to-VGA dongles are readily available, so it's just a matter of packing it all in there with Pi Zero or whatnot.)

 
Found myself at Microcenter on saturday and picked up a Pi Zero W.  Also bought one of those cheap composite screens to use for now, maybe in the future I'll upgrade it to that VGA screen

 
Somewhere out there an American Girl collector weeps.

Just need to find a small USB hub I can connect and mount in there, or just have another USB adapter sticking out the back. I also want to maybe hook the power switch up to it, and the speaker that's mounted in the case

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Nice! I'm not particularly a fan of hot-melt for holding everything together, but it looks like you did a good job with it!

After logging in, how usuable is the desktop?

 
Yeah, the hot glue is kind of ghetto but it works.  I figure it's not really going to be moving around much anyway so shouldn't be a big deal.

I haven't used it yet on the tiny screen at the desktop, but I'll post back when I determine how usable it is

 
use an old school magnifier to make it usable ;)

I remember old 80s racing game that had a projection/magnification lens type system in it with a very tiny LCD in the rear with a light bulb. 

I forget what it was, but I had it when I was 3 or 4. 

 
No, I cant remember the exact game as I was too young, but I do remember it having a lensing system very similar to the tabletop versions of the white/brown donkey kong jr. But I also remember it being black, with the controls on each side instead of the front. But again, I was 3 so it was way too long ago. 

I just remember tearing it apart and surprised me the LCD was so small for such a big picture. the LCD was in the back with a lightbulb behind it. So it was a backlit LCD based game that had a series of magnifiers so you could see it from the front, tabletop version. Whereas donkey kong I believe is actually a VFD based game, but maybe not. 

 
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