Ryan McDonough

Founder, Sometime Artist

CFO and co-founder @Accompany, acquired by @Cisco. Turnaround CFO @Ning, sold to Glam Media. Former seed VC. McKinsey trained. @Wharton School and @Haas School of Business.

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TINKERING

NES Homage on the Bookshelf

Sometimes the best projects start with leftovers.
NES Homage

Throwback build alert 🚀🎮

What do you get when you:

  • Gut a Facebook Portal ➡️ instant 1990s Trinitron vibes
  • Drop in a Raspberry Pi + Hyperpixel screen ➡️ tiny retro “TV”
  • Load up RetroPie ➡️ NES + Atari classics on tap
  • Add a Hallmark NES ornament ➡️ scale-perfect console

Final touch: staged on NES/Famicom: A Visual Compendium with a lucite riser so it looks like a mini museum piece.

A little slice of 1988, playable right from my bookshelf.

Sometimes the best projects start with leftovers.

I pulled apart an old Facebook Portal just to see what I could reuse. The chunky speaker block had that perfect 1990s Sony Trinitron vibe, so I gutted the insides and slid in a Raspberry Pi 4B paired with a Hyperpixel square touchscreen. After some aspect ratio and rotation tweaking, I had myself a tiny retro “TV.”

 

From there:

  • Wired the remaining Portal’s speakers to a 3.5mm jack on the Pi
  • Added a USB remote dongle + power switch
  • Loaded RetroPie with NES and Atari 2600 classics
  • Plugged in a wired NES-style controller with a 90 degree adapter

The finishing touches?

  • A perfectly scaled Hallmark Nintendo Entertainment System ornament in front
  • The whole setup staged on top of NES/Famicom: A Visual Compendium
  • A small lucite block raising it just enough to showcase the “console” and “TV” like a proper museum display

Now my bookshelf has a tiny slice of 1988, playable at the press of Start.