Running Photoshop on a 60p chip: a case for minimal, low-power computing

A hobbyist emulated a late-1980s Apple Macintosh on a Raspberry Pi RP2350 — a microcontroller that costs roughly 60 pence — and got Photoshop, along with WordPerfect, running on it. The build used the pico-mac emulator on Adafruit’s pre-assembled Fruit Jam board, which ships with WiFi, HDMI output, keyboard support and a ready-made Mac image, sidestepping the need for hand-soldering. With supporting parts, the author estimates a mid-1990s-class machine can be assembled today for a few pounds, versus the roughly £9,500 an inflation-adjusted Macintosh SE would cost now.

The real point is a thought experiment about the “minimal viable modern computer.” A dual-150MHz chip with a few megabytes of RAM covers much of what people actually do — writing, spreadsheets, email, light browsing — while consuming little power and remaining simple enough to be fully documented and understandable. The author sketches out a device with an e-paper display, possible solar power, a calmer non-distracting interface, and long-lived software that resists the throwaway upgrade cycle. Constraints like a text-first Gemini browser or A-to-Z-style paged maps are framed as deliberate trade-offs rather than shortcomings.

The piece connects to the Solarpunk and Permacomputing movements and their interest in repairable, privacy-respecting, user-moddable hardware. It also links to several open-source RP2350 board designs (ZeroFrank, the Pico Computer, Olimex RP2350pc) and notes the practical friction of porting software between them, since boards differ in GPIO layout and USB handling. The broader question it raises: what would computing look like if we optimized for sufficiency, sustainability, and attention rather than raw power?