DIY tiny Windows XP PC is an extreme nostalgia trip

Although the craze for old “retro” designs has gripped many industries, it has taken a rather odd direction in the computing and gaming worlds. More than just recreating the designs and experiences of the past, many retro computers or consoles also strangely decided to shrink those products down to sometimes unusable sizes. Though manufacturers like Nintendo have jumped on that bandwagon, the biggest push comes from makers and modders who now have a wide arsenal of tools available at their disposal, giving them the freedom to create or recreate almost any design imaginable. This painstaking DIY project, for example, tries to bring back the iconic beige computer boxes of the 90s in a way that’s almost usable, at least if you can manage squinting at a 4-inch screen.

Designer: Salim Benbouziyane

The PCs of the 90s and early 2000s aren’t really the epitome of inspired industrial design, which is why their rival Macs became the choice of designers, creators, and design-conscious users. Nonetheless, these geometric boxes were also the pinnacle of computing technology of that period, earning them their place not only in offices and homes but also in iconography. There are also quite a number of fond memories attached to these machines, which some more skilled craftsmen are now using to turn some of that nostalgia into a working PC, albeit a miniature one.

Patterned after one of the more common designs of Dell PCs, this tiny retro computer revives the spirit if not the function of those 90s computers. It’s pretty much a box-like CRT monitor sitting on top of another horizontal box which was the convention for desktop computers at that time. The attention to detail is pretty impressive, from the carved DELL branding to tiny “Intel Inside” and Windows decals.

It’s a completely functional computer, though not all represented features actually work. The floppy disk drives, for example, are naturally too small for any disk, but they happen to be the right side to let a micro SD card through. There are LED lights to indicate power and mimic the flickering “hard drive spinning” activity. On the software side, it convincingly mimics the Windows XP look and feel, but it’s actually a flavor of Linux designed for the Raspberry Pi that’s running inside. And, of course, it can run DOOM, just like any self-respecting computer.

As impressive as this intricate recreation might be, it is also one that is a true labor of love. It requires a lot of 3D printing, custom soldering, and fiddling with electronics, so it’s not something that just about anyone can do on their own. Fortunately, the instructions and materials for this project are all listed and available for anyone to see, reliving the spirit of openness and exploration that was also alive during that period.