Beige box on its side. Massive matching monitor. CD-ROM drive and a floppy disk drive underneath. This itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, off-white, boxy PC is a dead ringer for the first leftover computer my dad set up for me back in the early 90s. There’s but one difference: it’s six inches tall.
YouTuber Salim Benbouziyane (spotted by PCGamer and Yanko Design) made this thing from scratch by 3D-printing a case for a Raspberry Pi 4 and adding in an LCD screen in the monitor, plus a custom breakout board to get the power button and MicroSD card facing front on the case.
The MicroSD card holding the operating system and storage actually pops in and out of the tiny CD-ROM drive — a fantastic touch that means you don’t have to disassemble the entire thing just to load up new software.
The attention to detail in all of these elements is amazing. Even though the screen is integrated into the case and not a separate component like a real CRT monitor, its custom bezel blocks off a bit of the LCD to get a more nostalgic square shape. At 720 by 720, it’s far sharper than any of the real monitors from way back when, but it can twist a bit on its axle with satisfying plastic-on-plastic action.
The side-mounted speakers aren’t as authentic as the glow-pipe LEDs — PCs back then needed entirely separate speakers or headphones. But I think I’ll allow it since it means you’ll never snap those horrible old speaker wires.
The molded Dell logo and the monitor adjustment dials are really hitting my nostalgia buttons, too. It’s even rocking some old processor and OS decals, though Benbouziyane made them accurate to the actual guts. My God, it even has a dedicated volume wheel on the CD-ROM!
Even though it’s about the size of an Altoids tin, the Raspberry Pi 4 can run circles around any PC from the 90s, even accounting for the differences in x86 and Arm architecture. Though it’s skinned to look like Windows XP (dig that Winamp and Pipes screensaver!), the mini PC is actually running Twister OS, a PiOS fork with an XFCE environment.
It’s powerful enough to run Doom, naturally, but I’m loving Space Cadet 3D Pinball for that authentic “it’s twenty minutes till the end of class and I’m done with my book report” vibe. Benbouziyane controls programs and games via Bluetooth, though it’s easy enough to remote in if you want to make this thing run more useful network-based tools.
Check out the full video if you want to see it for yourself, and all the 3D printing and PCB files are available if you want to give it a try.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.