MacMod Project Turns Atari 2600 Into a Mac

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Our friends at MyMac.com have posted a video of a project to turn an Atari 2600 into a working Mac running Mac OS X. Calling the project MacMod, the video documents every step in the process of making this piece of video game history into a Mac, or perhaps that was making a Mac look like an Atari 2600.

Tim Robertson of MyMac likened the project to American Chopper -- a Discovery reality show that chronicles the weekly efforts of a motorcycle shop to make a new chopper every week -- and Junkyard Wars -- a show that pits two teams of geeks against each other in a project to make a functioning project out of parts in a junkyard.

What? You donit think that is a cool idea? Obviously, we did, so we actually did it. We created a show, named it MacMod, and filmed the whole thing over a six-week period starting October 2003 and finishing December 2003.

What is MacMod? An idea and concept that sprung to life in the minds of Tim Robertson and Chad Perry way back in the summer of 2003. The idea? Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a video show online that was like a combination of American Chopper and Junkyard Wars, but about Macs?
"What?" wrote Mr. Robertson. "You donit think that is a cool idea? Obviously, we did, so we actually did it. We created a show, named it MacMod, and filmed the whole thing over a six-week period starting October 2003 and finishing December 2003.

One year later, thanks to some difficulties along the way, the project has been edited into a proper show, and posted at MyMac.com.


A screen shot from the project.
(Note the OS X Dock on that video game!)

You can read about the project, and see the show itself in both a "small" and "large" format, at MyMac.com. Itis broken into easy-to-download chunks.

Bryan Chaffin

Bryan Chaffin

Bryan is the cofounder of The Mac Observer and currently serves as Afternoon Editor. He has contributed to MacAddict and MacFormat magazines, and coauthored Incredible iPad Apps for Dummies with Bob "Dr. Mac" LeVitus.

You can find out more about Bryan at his personal site, GeekTells, or follow him on Twitter @TMOBryan.

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