Summary
- 1979 Panasonic mini-CRT repurposed into a cyberdeck — retro CRT meets modern hardware.
- Raspberry Pi 5 and a rechargeable Li-ion battery squeezed into the TV for modern computing.
- Mod keeps the original pop-up screen, antenna and is fully reversible; connects via antenna input.
Did you know that, in the 70s, people could purchase a portable CRT TV to bring with them wherever they went? It seems like the laptop equivalent of the era, except the body was huge and the TV wasn’t the best quality. But it did have a CRT screen, and if you ask some retro hardware fans, that’s a good enough reason to fall in love with it.
Well, in the tried and true practice of DIY enthusiasts taking old hardware and turning it into something new, someone has grabbed an old Panasonic mini-CRT from 1979 and turned it into a full-blown cyberdeck. And while I can’t imagine you’ll be watching movies on it any time soon, it is a huge flex to bring to the coffee shop.
This Back to the Future-themed cyberdeck lives in a metal lunchbox, and yes, it has a flux capacitor
When this baby hits 88 WPM…
This mini-CRT cyberdeck brings almost 50 years of tech together
And it’s glorious
As spotted by Hackaday, this amazing project was brought to us by Luconaute on YouTube. They’ve taken a Panasonic TR-545 from 1979 and tweaked it so that it runs on modern-day hardware. The Panasonic TR-545 had a power cable, but it could also run off several large batteries, and as you might imagine, it chewed through them pretty quickly. Fortunately, this large battery bank meant that Luconaute had lots of room to add some modern-day touches.
First of all, because they weren’t keen on buying batteries by the pack, they installed a far mightier lithium-ion rechargable battery. They had enough room to also squeeze in a Raspberry Pi 5 to handle all the computing. Then they wired everything up, and presto: the coolest cyberdeck anyone has ever made.
If you have a feeling you’d see this in a cyberpunk movie from the 20th century, you’re not wrong:
This tiny pop-up CRT TV model appeared in the original Blade Runner movie. My goal was to preserve that charm, including the clunky pop-up screen and squeaky antenna, complementing it with a satisfying folding mechanical keyboard. The mod is completely reversible, and simply inputs video and audio through the TV’s antenna input.
If you’d like to read up on how Luconaute achieved this, they uploaded a 240 MB PDF to their Google Drive describing the process, which you can read at your leisure.
Someone created a retro weather forecaster with a mini CRT screen, and I’m insanely jealous
I have a mighty need.
