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PicoMEM Project : Pi Pico on an ISA Board.

modem7 said:
Confirming that your PicoMEM is creating an I/O port (with read-back capability) at 268 hex.
And what about the other thing that you were going to try; knocking the motherboard speed down to 4.77 MHz ?
Click to expand...
it is working fine in "slow mode".
 

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MicroCoreLabs said:
It makes sense that PicoMem may not have enough speed to run on an 8 Mhz ISA bus. however the PSRAM logic is independent of the ISA bus, isn't it? Once you assert the IOCHRDY to the host to insert wait states you can take as much time as you need to access PSRAM...
Click to expand...
Hi,

It is not a problem of ISA Clock.
An IBM 5150 4.77MHz ISA is Faster than the Synclair PC200 8MHz PC ISA (Timings)
ISA is asynchronous, and all the machines has different timing.

Shneider euro PC1 (that is slower than the EuroPC2) has a faster ISA as well.

The problem here is that your XT need the IOCHRDY earlyer so that it can be taken into account.

Next generation PicoMEM, with Pico2 will be much more faster for that. (the IOCHRDY signal move)
There is a new multiplexing allowing to do the Address decoding earlier.
 
I want to find a Slot cover with mounting points for the PICOMEM. Where do I look for that? (UK preferred but not essential)

Many thanks!
 
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mbbrutman said:
For those of you having problems with DHCP or getting networking running in general, we have found a bug in the driver and I have verified it with a work-around in mTCP. Stay tuned for an updated PM2000 driver.
Click to expand...
I saw the updated PM2000 driver and just gave it a try. That seems to have done the trick. At least I can get an IP via DHCP now and ping the gateway. Thanks for the fix!
 
I continue to have a lot of fun with my picomem, thanks for all the great work!

With regards to a real floppy controller coexisting with one or more virtual picomem floppy images:

I am able to get one real floppy and one picomem floppy, but not two of each. I tried setting my 5150's motherboard switches to 4 floppies (which picomem recognized), but I still seemed to only get two floppies in dos.

Is there a way to do this, or is this perhaps a feature request?

Thanks!
 
Hi Freddy. Great product! I am new to the forum and just purchased the PicoMEM for my Tandy 1000HX. It appears that I have set up everything appropriately, added the TANDY 128 line to the CONFIG.TXT file, and copied the HDD images from your Github page into the correct folder. I have several HDD images in the HDD folder, but whenever I select one as the primary image for HD0, when I boot I get a non-system disk error. Any thoughts on what I should check next?
Thanks, Mark
 
Was anyone ever able to determine the best configuration setup for the HX? I see there were issues identified early in the thread, and some individuals actually pivoted to the Krenicki 3-in-1 card. Looking for some assistance as I am not having much success. Thanks.
 
Has anyone gotten the PicoMEM to work on a Schneider EuroPC 1? I’ve tried various settings and various FastRAM firmwares, but haven’t been able to get the PicoMEM detected on bootup. My EuroPC is equipped with a NEC V20, and I know that someone has gotten it working on a EuroPC 2 with a NEC V20, but does the CPU make any difference? I’ve verified the PicoMEM to be working on a 386 SX, so that’s not an issue. I gather it comes down to firmware/config/IRQ combination, but I haven’t been able to figure out a working one yet.
 
mrthreeplates said:
I continue to have a lot of fun with my picomem, thanks for all the great work!

With regards to a real floppy controller coexisting with one or more virtual picomem floppy images:

I am able to get one real floppy and one picomem floppy, but not two of each. I tried setting my 5150's motherboard switches to 4 floppies (which picomem recognized), but I still seemed to only get two floppies in dos.

Is there a way to do this, or is this perhaps a feature request?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Hi,

No it is not coded, The number of person needing something lkiek this may be close to zero and the work to implement it is maybe quite big :(
 
Protek said:
Has anyone gotten the PicoMEM to work on a Schneider EuroPC 1? I’ve tried various settings and various FastRAM firmwares, but haven’t been able to get the PicoMEM detected on bootup. My EuroPC is equipped with a NEC V20, and I know that someone has gotten it working on a EuroPC 2 with a NEC V20, but does the CPU make any difference? I’ve verified the PicoMEM to be working on a 386 SX, so that’s not an issue. I gather it comes down to firmware/config/IRQ combination, but I haven’t been able to figure out a working one yet.
Click to expand...
Hi,

Did you try the PREBOOT option ?
Only the FR Firmware can work, the IRQ does not matter.
 
mswift74 said:
Was anyone ever able to determine the best configuration setup for the HX? I see there were issues identified early in the thread, and some individuals actually pivoted to the Krenicki 3-in-1 card. Looking for some assistance as I am not having much success. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Hi,
I did not get lot of report for the PicoMEM on Tandy 1000 so far, and I did put my 1000 HX on the side since months.
So, you are able to have the BIOS Setup and select the image ?

It is also better to move the BIOS to C000 or C800, then :
TANDY 128
BIOS C000
 
Protek said:
Has anyone gotten the PicoMEM to work on a Schneider EuroPC 1? I’ve tried various settings and various FastRAM firmwares, but haven’t been able to get the PicoMEM detected on bootup. My EuroPC is equipped with a NEC V20, and I know that someone has gotten it working on a EuroPC 2 with a NEC V20, but does the CPU make any difference? I’ve verified the PicoMEM to be working on a 386 SX, so that’s not an issue. I gather it comes down to firmware/config/IRQ combination, but I haven’t been able to figure out a working one yet.
Click to expand...
Hi,

It was just confirmed to me again that it work well on the EuroPC1 from Retro Erik.
 

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FreddyV said:
Hi,

Did you try the PREBOOT option ?
Only the FR Firmware can work, the IRQ does not matter.
Click to expand...
Yes, I have PREBOOT in the config file.

Erik, I believe, has both the EuroPC1, which has the stock CPU, and the EuroPC2, which has been upgraded with the NEC V20. I tried slowing down the clock speed to 4.77 MHz, but that made no change.
 
Hi,

I published the latest #PicoMEM firmware.

This one is a huge step for the board as it can now use USB Drive, plus MicroSD as a "Network" like drive.
Then, it has Full access to the disks in FAT32/ExtFS from DOS.

USB Disk can be removed at any time, to copy files to the PC from a modern PC.
No more need to extract the SD to copy a file or program.

You can also edit the PicoMEM config file, Wifi setup file, and copy/rename floppy image from DOS.

github.com

GitHub - FreddyVRetro/ISA-PicoMEM: PicoMEM Doc and Firmware

PicoMEM Doc and Firmware. Contribute to FreddyVRetro/ISA-PicoMEM development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

You can see a demo in video here :
https://twitter.com/x/status/1894861569231901111
 
Cool. Can you now boot from a normal MicroSD card like the XTMax, or do you still need to boot from a disk image on the MicroSD?
 
MicroCoreLabs said:
Cool. Can you now boot from a normal MicroSD card like the XTMax, or do you still need to boot from a disk image on the MicroSD?
Click to expand...
There is nothing that prevent this technically, it is extremely simple and basic...
It is just that I don't want to do this.

This force to have a FAT Compatible with the OS and limit the size....
There is absolutely no advantage to do that.
Disk image is easy to do and to maintain. (With the correct program, just have to double click on the Image file to open it and add files on it)

Have an SD or Compact flash to boot from an XTIDE or an XTMAX can also be complex, you don't imagin the number of person asking for help for this on forums everywhere...
 
FreddyV said:
Disk image is easy to do and to maintain. (With the correct program
Click to expand...
I disagree, but this is just one of the differences between the two projects. PicoMem requires the user to maintain disk images and XTMax does not.

FreddyV said:
Have an SD or Compact flash to boot from an XTIDE or an XTMAX can also be complex, you don't imagin the number of person asking for help for this on forums everywhere...
Click to expand...
I see there have been issues with XTIDE but with XTMax you FDISK and FORMAT /S the MicroSD and it just works. Very simple and nobody has had trouble (yet).
 
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MicroCoreLabs said:
I disagree, but this is just one of the differences between the two projects. PicoMem requires the user to maintain disk images and XTMax does not.


I see there have been issues with XTIDE but with XTMax you FDISK and FORMAT /S the MicroSD and it just works. Very simple and nobody has had trouble (yet).
Click to expand...
The fact that you disagree does not make the XTMax superior in management of disk.
XTMax act as a simple SPI controller.
We can say the reverse, XTMax is not nice because stuck to one disk per MicroSD...

So, your view is that it is better to maintain and buy multiple MicroSD to have different OS and set of software...

If I want to test driver on DOS 3, 3.31, 6, run CPM or whatever else, it take some second to select another image.
 
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