I’ve started modeling fair number of classic PCs and here’s a first pass of the Trash 80 that I used the most:
The only remaining parts to do are the small printed paper screens to replace the ugly “Hello” in the pic and the teensie tiny badge that goes between the floppy drives. I’ve tried a number of methods to make the badge’s tiny text white while the base is black but none have satisfied. I have a few more ideas, so I’m not beat yet!
I ordered an appropriately sized display that should work in the Adafruit EyeSPI ecosystem which hopefully means it shouldn’t be too hard to give it a bit of computation and at least some pixels.
This QTPy is a bit overpowered compared to the original Model III. 
Adafruit QT Py S3 with 2MB PSRAM WiFi Dev Board with STEMMA QT : ID 5700 : $12.50 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
Step 1 is to nail down a nice printable model, though.
I’d forgotten about the QTPy — that’s adorable!
Hmmm. I’ve been resin printing the badge since the text is too tiny for my FDM printers. But, maybe I can transfer a black toner print onto an FDM print where the first layer is solid and white and then rest are black layers.
Might just work!
Are the floppy drives about the right size to accept microsd cards? I don’t have a good sense of scale here.
The slots in the floppy drives are 22.2mm wide so they’ll easily fit microsd cards (11cm wide) and I could probably tweak the model a bit to fit 24mm full sized SD cards.
If I end up tucking electronics inside I was thinking of making little floppy disks that fit perfectly in the drives and can act as adapters for microSD cards.
That’s awesome. I remember “programming” drawings in LOGO on one growing up. Before that I had the COCO model 1 and 2. Wrote a few school papers on those.
I had all three. I traveled with my Coco 3 and a 300 baud modem.
Wow. My first pc was an Apple IIc followed by a commodore 64. I didn’t know there was something a generation below.
Very cool modeling those computers.
When you want to shrink a replica even further, you could look at this board! 
That’s a cool project!
My issue is usually finding displays for smaller scales that I can drive without circuitry that’s beyond my current EE skills. Adafruit’s EyeSPI ecosystem will, I hope, open that up a bit as they open board designs and code for standard display panels that I can use or adapt.
An hour of futzing and now I have the display driven by a wee Adafruit QT Py board, at least on a breadboard.
The printer is working on a couple of tweaked parts that hopefully will let me mount the display in a case.
This same setup with an even smaller display could work in smaller miniatures, as well. If I solder the QT Py directly to the display instead of using that breakout board I think it could fit in a 1:12 scale PC!
loving that it also has the rounded corners of the classic CRTs. Nice!
The rounded corners were what sold me on this specific panel. I suspect it was originally for smart watches.
