Steampunk Mac Uses A 140 Year Old Typewriter

There is a kind of magic in checking out all the steampunk stuff on the Internet. I don’t know what it is about it, but I get this tingling feeling almost like when I was a little kid before Christmas. Maybe it’s because I used to play Myst and Riven when they came out. I was obsessed with them, and I wanted to see whatever animation and images they created to make the game. I think I watched the behind the scenes footage like a million times, dreaming about what it would be like to create a whole new world from my imagination. That’s almost what the creators of awesome steampunk stuff are doing. They take stuff that was previously brand new (almost) and crunk it down to Victorian age technology.

Technology adventurer Steve La Riccia has a different approach when imagining a new Mac. His way of looking at it is to lock himself down for three months tinkering on his very own custom made Mac using a truck load of parts from different times. For example, he used a 140 year old typewriter which he modified to act as a keyboard. There was no return/enter key, so he re-purposed the cartridge release (the lever lets you roll the paper).

Furthermore, Steve also used a 56K modem, a telegraph key mouse and a floppy drive to mention only a few things he used. The whole thing is a masterpiece, and just looking at it will have your fingers itching. However, don’t expect to install Apple‘s Lion operating system on it anytime soon. The mesmerizing gadget only runs on Mac OS 7.5, and I am sure that’s about as far as you can take this puppy without further customization. All I can say is that if I could just get 30 minutes with this thing, I would be happy for a month!

Via: [GizmoWatch]