It turns out that there is already a TSR for the PicoMem that allows you to switch floppy disks while booted into DOS. The TSR was part of the utility package on the Github repo. Freddy is also working on enhancing the Wifi features in the BIOS to provide more feedback than the current "no feedback" approach. The thing continues to improve!
I looked on FreddyV's github but didn't see the utility package you are referring to. I grabbed the floppy disk image sv86-720.img but didn't see any prg in the image that looked right.
Thanks for the informational video. I’m sure about what I’ll be buying this summer! Perhaps your “communicational lines” towards Freddy are a bit shorter than mine, so could you check if it’s possible to/works to put two (or more) RP2040’s on one card and make them work together, just to make sure they’re able to manage when handling those extra MHz-es, one Hz at a time. “RP2040-SLI” if you will. I’d love to see that! :)
It'd be great if there was a display that'd connect to the picomem VIA the i2c interface that'd give you an LCD screen with some buttons that'd let you swap disks that way. Mount the LCD screen either in a 5 1/4" drive bay or some other location where it's easily accessible. Not everything plays well with TSR applications so having the option to have a separate LCD controller you could hook up would be great.
Hey Adrian, I just got my picomem last night and was trying to sort out why it wasn't saving my BIOS (didn't have the SD card in it.) So thanks for this timely video. I looked on the github page and couldn't find the TSR you were talking about. I also looked in the HDD Images and sv86-720.img floppy image and could find the TSR prg there either. Can you give some more info on where that TSR prg is for swapping floppy images?
Imagine if we 40 years ago was told that in the year 2024 people would still produce hardware new for our 40 years old computers, and that they would not only be totally insane but also very cheap. I'm still amazed by the amount of projects for our retro computers.
@arnolduk123 Windows 1.0 was released in 1985. "40 years ago" was 1984. Windows 95 wouldn't come out until 10 years after Windows 1.0. So "people would be surprised about Windows not using year as version name" is nonsense.
@@ericpaul4575 And even with that, the RP2040 is only just fast enough (being overclocked over 2x stock clock speed) to properly talk on an ISA bus at 8mhz, something any Intel CPU even from the 70s can do with ease. :-)
Nothing you said would have been a surprise. In the 80s, vintage collection was already a thing, people would romantisice about the 50s and old radios, cars, machines in general
@arnolduk123 quite a few people, a lot of experimental operating system research in the late 80s, early 90s was around the idea of handling the transition from big iron and minicomputers, to microcomputers, to 1 user: many computers. Amoeba and Sprite were functional examples, building on the decreasing price of compute to turn networks of computers into a single system image from a users perspective
It would be so fun to make a little 3D accelerator that uses DMA to copy offload software rendered frames to VGA video memory. It could DMA the render command list from RAM too, 10MB/sec would allow for ~150fps @ 320x200, 8bpp so it would be reasonable to keep up. Using 8MHz 3 cycles per 16 bits.
Yup. Same goes for the VIC and SID replacements for the C64 you can get these days. I like to call this the "Spaceship of Theseus" problem, where at what point do modern improvements erase the idea of it being something old-fashioned? This is also explored in Babylon 5 (of all places) where a motorcycle restoration project was given a Minbari power supply instead of a gas-burning engine - does this defeat the purpose of the work or not?
There's a huge potential for profit with this if this guy tools this thing for Industrial use and offers an ISA card for old industrial machines that can easily ass remote management, file sharing over wifi, and other features to interface with more modern equipment without disrupting the old highly specialized machines that some places still use. I can imagine old milling machines suddenly having access to off-site storage and backups, allowing their IT to remote into their control computers, or even allowing floor staff to access and start the machine remotely with their phones.
That is amazing. A small detail about when you entered the bbs and said there was someone else logged from South Carolina. In fact, it said Criciuma, SC which is not South Carolina, this SC stands for Santa Catarina, a Brazilian State. The Criciuma is a city in the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil.
On the one hand, this feels a lot like cheating. But on the other hand, it’s amazing to see the vintage computing scene so active and healthy that something like this can even exist. Really love it.
@@basicforge but if we bought this card back in the day, it would have way less processing power, and would have been more expensive. if the raspberry pi pico had display out, it could just emulate the entire computer. i personally prefer the approach of separate cards built for one or two purposes, using with simple ICs and some low level firmware. this certainly wouldn't be the way i'd go for my builds, but i do agree with the top comment, it's nice this is helping vintage computers work today.
Thanks for the plug of my BBS ! I just set it up a couple weeks ago. I was a sysop back in the late 80's early 90's and decided to fire up a BBS again .. Had a few people join the board from you showing it in this video. Thanks
Not going to lie - it is epic that there is still a community that is dedicated to keeping all kinds of old computers running so that people can either relive their memories from way back in the day or that younger generations can experience what computing was like at that time. But regardless, it makes me chuckle that you basically plop in a card that has a computer on board which in itself has orders of magnitude more "computing oomph" than the original computer it gets plugged into. Even being on the very low end of the ARM spectrum, that little Cortex M0+ on the Pi Pico dwarfs an 8088 or 8086 no problem...At the same time, seeing the price of the Pi Pico, compared to what a PC cost when it was current tech, shows what giant leaps in development happened since.
There's actually two things that are really interesting about having the option of a new board with an MCU - first, that hobbyists can make new add-on cards without much difficulty now, and second - that for any given computing architecture, we can upgrade it to the level of that card. That removes any vintage limitations - the capability of all the computers is all "at the same level" now, limited just by development time. You can make this kind of upgrade for a PC, or an Apple II, or an Amiga, or anything else that you could figure out a way of shoehorning in, and you can make upgrades that copy the capabilities associated with one to the others. It inverts the usual thing of having to make software drivers that deal with hardware: a piece of "smart hardware" like this can act as the driver for something like a USB mouse.
@@k4be. Exact :) The Wifi module is faster than the RP2040, like graphic card are faster than the PC. The important is that the Pico is not used to accelerate the PC CPU. It adds options that were possible on these PC : HDD, Floppy, Network, Adlib. All this were used on 8088 PC back in the time.
This thought crossed my mind a couple of years ago when I bought an Atari 800XL with a FujiNet device. The FujiNet is just a relatively tiny device that plugs into the back of the computer and seems like just a peripheral that's helping the computer out a little like an extra hand on a person, but really it's taking data from a network or an SD card and running circles around the Atari with its processing power to dumb things down to a level that the Atari can easily handle. It's more like the Atari is a peripheral for the FujiNet simply for the purpose of giving it a more nostalgic interface rather than simply using an emulator.
In addition to being fantastic, the design of the setup utility is just beyond great. Superlatives aside, all of us in the retro community owe a debt of thanks to developers who have taken inexpensive modern hardware, like the pico, and opened an entire world of possibilities.
I think theres a place both for cards like this that do everything by basically adding a whole faster computer inside, and recreations using modern parts to do things the same way real vintage expansion cards did it. Its great having cards like this for ease of use (and honestly this looks *great* especially the BIOS menu!) but cards with a bunch of TTL and whatever are great too because thats all part of retro computing!
This is cool. Nice to see convergence like this. In the day I wanted to know every last aspect of the PC. I got too busy to do that. I'm amazed at the detailed knowledge necessary to implement this idea! PS, the right words for LIM (Lotus-Intel-Microsoft) memory is "expanded". You can't get "extended" memory on less than a 286. EMM386 has options for dividing memory into expanded and extended memory side by side. The "/noems" switch prevents the default allotment. The earliest essential use of extended memory was in Netware 286. There was an DOS executable that did nothing but switch to protected mode and set up a large flat model address space for the OS to inhabit. Actual memory protection was not required and not used. That was essentially the birth of the practical LAN.
The term "PSRAM" refers to Psuedo-static RAM, meaning that it is DRAM that can refresh itself without external refresh circuitry, and be simply wired onto a board like it was SRAM. It does not necessarily mean that it's accessed over an SPI bus. But on this device, it looks like it is indeed on an SPI bus.
TBH these machines were not meant to run for more than what, 4-5 years? I have a basement full of 80s and 90s PCs that work fully, even an NES and a Genesis (which is on now, we're taking stages in beating Sonic 2 lol). I can't seem to recall any newer consoles or computers working for even 10 years.
Neat to see a Leading Edge here. It was my first XT clone PC when I was a kid - though I had the older Model M. It was enough to pirate a bunch of CGA games from my friend whose dad had nearly every PC game in existence going back to the original IBM PC days. When I got a newer 486, I took the Model M and threw it out of the third story window of my parents' house onto the driveway to see what would happen. It landed flat with a huge smack, nothing fell off or exploded out of it. I brought it back inside, hooked it up, and it still worked - except for the hard drive. That thing was pure steel like a tank, like so many PCs in those days.
What's so great about this "New Tech for Old Tech" is that it enhances the Old Tech to work in a modern environment without detracting too much from the retro experience --- and makes retro computing more affordable by bypassing the high prices of rare cards and peripherals. (No wonder Adrian is so enthusiastic about this project!)
@Adrian, at 38:19, it's not South Carolina, it's Criciúma, state of Santa Catarina in Brasil. Thank you for the video, it took me more than 30 years ago.
I bought a couple of RP Picos a couple of years ago with the intention to create revolution. Did nothing with them. Very nice to see these gadgets using the RP2040. Wow!!
This card is just awesome to say the least! It blows me away how versatile that the Pi Pico really is, and it's a great way to keep these old computers going as well as unlock new capabilities such as WiFi, etc.
That is really cool. I personally have no use for it, but I love learning about these things. Nice work to the developer/designer of this thing, keep up the good work. Back in the late 90s I thought it would be cool to collect some old machines once I was finished with school and living on my own ... but I realized I probably wouldn't actually end up doing anything with them, and as computers have generally become so much easier to deal with (no IRQs, networking by default, USB, faster CPUs, etc), I've had less and less interest in doing it. But I do love living vicariously through your videos.
For years I was looking for such an "all in one" solution for the Schneider (Amstrad) PC1512 I inherited after my father sadly passed away in 2021. This is a very nostalgic machine for me as this was the first time, I ever played videogames together with my dad, while he used this PC mostly to program in Turbo Pascal etc. Should also be a nifty solution for backing up all those files that are for sure soon lost to time because of those aging floppys and floppy drives (the PC1512 I have here only came with dual 5 1/4" floppy drives and no HDD).
@@freddyvretrozone2849 Amazing! I'll hope there will be a seller located in Europe soon, as sadly importing one from the US is quite expensive because of import duties and shipping.
GDI! _YOU'RE_ the one who bought that Model D out from under me! That setup is literally what my first computer growing up was. Although ours was dual-floppy when bought, I paid for a hard drive+controller from lawn mowing/babysitting money. We even had that same monitor.
The one improvement id like to see is a header to be able to use an external or front panel/bay mountable card reader. The big advantage of using an XTIDE and GoTek in my current 5160 is having the usb and cf card ports mounted right in the 2 right drive bays of my machine for access (the half height 32mb RLL HDD that still works and 360k floppy are on the left). Getting to the back of the machine to change out an SD card would be a serious PITA where I have my 5160 set up. I like the idea of this card though, and might consider it in future for another machine! Good job!
I don't think this card "obsoletes" a bunch of cards, what it does is make these capabilities available via modern components. The biggest problem I see with "Adlib" cards is getting the sound chips. If the Pico can emulate the sound chip, and it can emulate the 5v chips of the XT IDE, and it can emulate other peripherals, all while using a software designed "hardware stack", that's great. It would be interesting to see someone emulate an XT from scratch with video support on a Pico, then maybe tie multiple picos together to make a modern hardware emulator? Yeah, at that point it's not far removed from Dos Box, but it's still hardware and that scratches an itch that Dos Box doesn't.
I ordered a picomem. My XT has a hard card and two floppy drives, I just don't have a system other than my XT with a 5 in floppy drive. I have been stuck. I love that I can finally replace my hard card, and get files onto the system. Looking forward to playing with this isa card.
I watched the majority of this video before I realized that you're wearing AJ's Forgotten Machines t-shirt. AJ is part of our CoCo community at Glenside, and he's a really great guy. Looking for ward to seeing you at VCFMW.. only 112 days (but who's counting!!)
Thanks for this review / walk through, Adrian :) What I'm seeing here is an excellent "first stop" for an ISA card to put in a resurrected XT / AT and get it going. - A "Swiss Army Knife" ISA card that will get one out of most jams. Certainly a "must have" for those restoring XTs. I think those dedicated RAM expansion and controller replacement cards still have a use-case in terms of performance / compatibility.
That thing's pretty cool. I hope a 16-bit ISA slot version gets released at some point. I don't personally care about XT-class machines; they're too slow and limited to do much with. But a lot of those features would be really handy on an 386 or newer, especially one with limited room for ISA cards like my Toshiba T5200.
Especially if they can add a CD-ROM emu where you can load CD images on virtual drives like they've done here with floppy and HDD. Man that would be cool. Absolute epitome would be an easy way to connect full powered Pi for MT-32 midi emulation. Feels like the sky's the limit on this whole concept.
what a fantastic device! could breathe an insane amount of life into some of those XT class machines in tiny tiny cases that are incredibly difficult to expand - like my (sadly long-gone) childhood Amstrad PC20.
Just ordered one as I was still looking for a integrated network solution. Very nice demonstration about the capabilities and hopefully it improves over time.
I'm building an A8PicoCart, a software defined Atari 8-bit cartridge. I've also seen SIDPICOs that use the PICO too. They are $3-5 for a 16MB version. Supercheap.
that's absolutely incredible! 😍 so cool to see the retro computer community keeping old machines alive with things like this. Excellent video Adrian, thank you for making it!
This was a happy video in my feed :) Thanks! I managed to watch only 1/10th of the video before jumping to conclusions and ordering a PicoMEM of my own. And then I ordered the Adlib emulator too. So I managed to spend a truckload of money. Here's hanging my hopes high :) The machine I'm aiming at putting it into is a very special one. An IBM PC 5150 with some exceptional history (which will be shared at the right time) Thanks for a very interesting and useful video!
16:42 watching this while distracted I was surprised to suddenly see a gnome head pop out of nowhere! (The IDE cable kinda looks like a red pointed hat, face, and blue beard.)
I may look into one of these for my PS/2 Model 25- when I get the thing back together. NTP support would be really nice in the future. I don't remember ANSI.SYS being terribly slow- at least in DOS 4.01 which is what I had on my first PC. My 5150 is currently running PC-DOS 2000.
Adrian, one note: when you connected to bbs the other user connected was not from South Carolina, but actually from Criciuma, Santa Catarina - Brazil hahaha Regards from Brazil ;)
Adrian, this is an amazing rindown on this card - grat explanation of the advantages and dissadvantages. Its great to see it in use and see how itnworks. 😊
I think the best use of this card would be for testing. Because you could drop it into the machine, and have it emulate a lot of stuff, meaning you only have to troubleshoot the MB or video card, or sound card, or whatever without worrying about other vintage parts not playing well with others.
Hi Adrian, thanks for the tip about this product. I will use it to resurect my old Tulip SX Compact 2 which was my first computer. It is actually a Dutch made 386sx and is still working except for the 3,5" floppy. Replacing that floppy drive with others I have (I remember even trying that when it first failed). Would you happen to know why other floppy drives simply refuse to work on a 386sx?
So much MSDOS coming back to me. It's been so long. Fun video and an absolutely amazing card. If I ever wanted to get back into DOS, this would be the way to go.
What a cool device, I love what people are doing to keep old computers alive, even if this is the engine equivelant of connecting a 1000hp dragster engine to your 80 hp cars motor to use as it's starter 😂
Maybe a closer analogy would be upgrading the radio in your classic car for bluetooth instead of AM radio. Your car engine is unchanged. Maybe some new tires for safer traction etc.
The RP2040 is truly a versatile device - I don't have an old PC for this, but I DO have an Atari STE and am using a device called the SideCART - maybe a future video idea? Plugged into the ST's cartridge port, it does things such as RTC, floppy (even loading from internet) and HDD emulation. Like this device, the SideCART is still in (very) active development. Worth checking out!
@@henrikgustav2294 I am not sure, my SD to PCMCIA adapter is capable of booting from it, can not speak for all versions of these adapters. Yet, there are PCMCIA floppies that most Toshiba Libretto computers boot from, also let’s not forget the PCMCIA CD-ROM drives which are bootable, that is how I installed OS/2 Warp to my Gateway 486DX2-66
One thing they should think about is doing a DOS IFS (like MSCDEX or one of the network drivers) which pushes the actual filesystem implementation onto the RP2040. It'll be less compatible than the existing BIOS emulation, but it would completely avoid the problems with big filesystems on DOS --- you could access the entire SD card in a single partition.
I think it's neat that people still make brand new items for ancient tech. The only sad/hilarious thing is, the new part is so much more powerful than the computer it's connected to is like getting an 18 wheeler to push a shopping cart....
As a vintage comp user, my tandy 1000RL-HD only has one ISA slot, so while I would like to spend 100s buying the whole line up, I couldn't use them all and couldn't afford them all, this picomem is my saviour...
Is there a Board with a RaspberryPi, which you can put in a XT/AT System, wich allows you to use Keyboard, Diskrive, all the Ports on the Backside and Harddrive like the PiStorm or Vampire Project for Amiga? That would be cool!
rp2040 is basically 2x (dual core) i486 or even Pentiums, integer speed wise IIRC, so that card is like adding a whole computer into your computer to emulate stuff for it ;)
This really has ridiculous potential. Lots of shenanigans you can potentially get up to if you put custom firmware on something like this or add hardware to available GPIO pins of the microcontroller. I need to get an XT and one of these things and see what can be done.
I had a leading edge growing up. A later 386 model. We had it up until like i dunno 1999 or 2000. It couldn't do a whole lot but I was also too young to know how to get it to do much. I did pick up a fair bit of shareware off of AOL though like ant attack and empipe.
You remembered it slightly off. The number is 64ms. Security researchers have shown that approximately the square root of the memory size is poor, leaks like a sieve, and needs to be refreshed at least every 64ms. Most of the memory is drastically better than that, and can usually hold its contents for minutes, or even longer. This is why full system memory encryption is necessary. You can just unplug memory sticks and plug them into another board and almost all of the memory content is unaffected. Sure, some small amount will corrupt. You are seeing how well cold boot attacks can work. Simplistic systems that were oblivious about security, like your board there, will not clear RAM - you can just reboot and read the RAM content.
Just ordered one! Messing around with a Zenith eazypc that was supposedly not expandable and that uses XTA HD interface. Turns out that the expansion port is just a pin version of Isa bus. Will see what we can get out of it with the PicoMem all in one!
Just went for a quick look and now 45 minutes are gone. Fascinating stuff. I’m generally not a fan of using SBCs for emulation that overpower the system itself by many factors, but this does look like a neat piece of work and the bios interface makes for a great not-quite time period appropriate setup. Also, using wifi for networking beats running coax cable again and trying to plug that into a 21st century router 😇
Imagine if a faster version of an RP2040 processor comes out. If I had an old PC I would get one. My first PC was made by Epson and had a Cyrix 486 50MHz with 8MB of RAM (upgraded to 64MB due to possible bad RAM which caused Win 96 to BSOD almost every time you closed a window). Never had anything older than that except my Grandfather's Mac Classic I inherited after his death. I love how people are creating new products for old computers.
Hi Adrian, i use 2 the Pico cards in my Atari. The Sidecart device in the Atari ST has simular abilities. And the A8Pico for my 800XL. Great devices. Thanks for the video.
The 286 supported high memory (HMA) because it supported memory above the first megabyte. If I remember correctly, 286 went up to 24 bits of address space. Not sure if that PicoMEM could support HMA though, as I'm not sure that A20 is brought out on that older 8 bit ISA bus. Theoretically, the traditional 8086 could have supported high memory if Intel had exposed A20. HMA works by setting a segment register to FFFF, and offsetting past the end of the first megabyte for up to 65520 bytes of memory above the first megabyte. However, because the 8086 doesn't have A20, that address space wraps to the low 64. PC compatible machines that have a CPU with an A20 line also typically have a fabulous hack to enable the A20 line in their chipset so they can reproduce the traditional wrap to address 0 behavior for the HMA. This is traditionally done using an AND gate attached to the 8042 keyboard controller. I believe Compact (or someone) created a "fast A20" hack that does it through I/O port 92h. There was a patent on using port 92h to enable A20 for years; not on the hardware implementation, but on writing to the I/O port in software!
Slightly pedantic, but "high memory" in PC terms is the 64KiB of memory above 1MiB which can be utilised on 286+ due to the segmentation of memory allowing segment FFFF to map the 21st address line (A20) instead of wrapping back to the beginning. UMBs are just upper memory, above the arbitary RAM/IO boundary, which is usually *but not always* 640KiB, but below 1MiB.
That is a really cool project! The floppy disc switching would be a nice feature, though, especially for multi-disk games or a new DOS installation or something like that :)
@@freddyvretrozone2849 That's really cool, so you will go into the Phoenix-like BIOS and can change the floppy image there? That is neat! Oh and btw, do you have any idea where I would get that "tools" disc that Adrian always uses with all the test software on it? Just playing around with PCem, just found that and the ROMs and having a blast! :D
![[Live สด] การออกรางวัลสลากกินแบ่งรัฐบาล งวดวันที่ 16 พฤศจิกายน 2567](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wPd7VFfWHIA/mqdefault.jpg)
It turns out that there is already a TSR for the PicoMem that allows you to switch floppy disks while booted into DOS. The TSR was part of the utility package on the Github repo. Freddy is also working on enhancing the Wifi features in the BIOS to provide more feedback than the current "no feedback" approach. The thing continues to improve!
I looked on FreddyV's github but didn't see the utility package you are referring to. I grabbed the floppy disk image sv86-720.img but didn't see any prg in the image that looked right.
@@troytaylor623 Hi, It is not via a driver, Press (left) Ctrl Shift F2 to change disks. It is also explained in the GiuHub doc
Thanks for the informational video. I’m sure about what I’ll be buying this summer!
Perhaps your “communicational lines” towards Freddy are a bit shorter than mine, so could you check if it’s possible to/works to put two (or more) RP2040’s on one card and make them work together, just to make sure they’re able to manage when handling those extra MHz-es, one Hz at a time. “RP2040-SLI” if you will. I’d love to see that! :)
It'd be great if there was a display that'd connect to the picomem VIA the i2c interface that'd give you an LCD screen with some buttons that'd let you swap disks that way. Mount the LCD screen either in a 5 1/4" drive bay or some other location where it's easily accessible. Not everything plays well with TSR applications so having the option to have a separate LCD controller you could hook up would be great.
Hey Adrian, I just got my picomem last night and was trying to sort out why it wasn't saving my BIOS (didn't have the SD card in it.) So thanks for this timely video. I looked on the github page and couldn't find the TSR you were talking about. I also looked in the HDD Images and sv86-720.img floppy image and could find the TSR prg there either. Can you give some more info on where that TSR prg is for swapping floppy images?
Imagine if we 40 years ago was told that in the year 2024 people would still produce hardware new for our 40 years old computers, and that they would not only be totally insane but also very cheap. I'm still amazed by the amount of projects for our retro computers.
And also contain a processor that is more powerful than the one on the main computer.
@arnolduk123 Windows 1.0 was released in 1985. "40 years ago" was 1984. Windows 95 wouldn't come out until 10 years after Windows 1.0. So "people would be surprised about Windows not using year as version name" is nonsense.
@@ericpaul4575 And even with that, the RP2040 is only just fast enough (being overclocked over 2x stock clock speed) to properly talk on an ISA bus at 8mhz, something any Intel CPU even from the 70s can do with ease. :-)
Nothing you said would have been a surprise. In the 80s, vintage collection was already a thing, people would romantisice about the 50s and old radios, cars, machines in general
@arnolduk123 quite a few people, a lot of experimental operating system research in the late 80s, early 90s was around the idea of handling the transition from big iron and minicomputers, to microcomputers, to 1 user: many computers. Amoeba and Sprite were functional examples, building on the decreasing price of compute to turn networks of computers into a single system image from a users perspective
The irony is that the Pico is way more powerful than the computer itself. But, seriously, this is an awesome card. Great idea. 😊
spoke my thought. 10000x faster perhaps
It's like attaching a 1000hp inline engine to a 10hp outboard motor to make the outboard run better.
😂
@@bmobertno, to make it start turning left and right again, because the original driving wheel system was broken 😂
It would be so fun to make a little 3D accelerator that uses DMA to copy offload software rendered frames to VGA video memory. It could DMA the render command list from RAM too, 10MB/sec would allow for ~150fps @ 320x200, 8bpp so it would be reasonable to keep up. Using 8MHz 3 cycles per 16 bits.
Yup. Same goes for the VIC and SID replacements for the C64 you can get these days. I like to call this the "Spaceship of Theseus" problem, where at what point do modern improvements erase the idea of it being something old-fashioned? This is also explored in Babylon 5 (of all places) where a motorcycle restoration project was given a Minbari power supply instead of a gas-burning engine - does this defeat the purpose of the work or not?
There's a huge potential for profit with this if this guy tools this thing for Industrial use and offers an ISA card for old industrial machines that can easily ass remote management, file sharing over wifi, and other features to interface with more modern equipment without disrupting the old highly specialized machines that some places still use.
I can imagine old milling machines suddenly having access to off-site storage and backups, allowing their IT to remote into their control computers, or even allowing floor staff to access and start the machine remotely with their phones.
Who doesn't want ass remote management?
@@briannickel5131HR is calling, they need to speak with you. 😂😂
Indeed -- all those old CNC milling machine and what not using old DOS stuff could totally use this for remote control. Pretty epic!
@@briannickel5131 I'm not even sure what I was typing to get that typo, but I like it.
I'd say you pressed a s instead of d and 'autocorrect' added a second one.
That is amazing. A small detail about when you entered the bbs and said there was someone else logged from South Carolina. In fact, it said Criciuma, SC which is not South Carolina, this SC stands for Santa Catarina, a Brazilian State. The Criciuma is a city in the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil.
On the one hand, this feels a lot like cheating. But on the other hand, it’s amazing to see the vintage computing scene so active and healthy that something like this can even exist. Really love it.
As old hardware gets more and more rare, and more and more costly, we’re going to have to go emulated/virtualized along with that more and more.
Not cheating. We would all have bought this card if it existed back in the day.
@@basicforge but if we bought this card back in the day, it would have way less processing power, and would have been more expensive. if the raspberry pi pico had display out, it could just emulate the entire computer. i personally prefer the approach of separate cards built for one or two purposes, using with simple ICs and some low level firmware. this certainly wouldn't be the way i'd go for my builds, but i do agree with the top comment, it's nice this is helping vintage computers work today.
@@fierelier7691 You mean like the FabGL VGA32? That they sell for peanuts? ;)
In a way, I kinda wish the same was true for Classic Mac OS computers.
Thanks for the plug of my BBS ! I just set it up a couple weeks ago. I was a sysop back in the late 80's early 90's and decided to fire up a BBS again .. Had a few people join the board from you showing it in this video. Thanks
NICE!
i loved the roleplaying games and muds. the early mmorpgs 🤓🥰
gorgeous ansii art sometimes as you explore and stuff.
What MUDs are you running? I'd love to get back into hellbound development. I used to be a demi and made tons of dungeons way back when.
Hmmmm, you should add IPv6 AAAA records
@@Scooptayou are a summing that he even has access to IPv6, many don't have still access to IPv6. But me personally has 3 big ranges so it's silly.
So glad to see the PicoMEM BIOS setup screen keeps up the tradition of misspellings
It's an easy fix 😂. I've noticed a few here and there and flagged them to Freddy.
Where?
@@danieltaon "Extention" is one of them, should be spelled "extension".
@@RetroTechChris Aww they feel so era appropriate though :P
@@oliverer3 LOL! I bet FreddyV can put them back if you want them!
Not going to lie - it is epic that there is still a community that is dedicated to keeping all kinds of old computers running so that people can either relive their memories from way back in the day or that younger generations can experience what computing was like at that time.
But regardless, it makes me chuckle that you basically plop in a card that has a computer on board which in itself has orders of magnitude more "computing oomph" than the original computer it gets plugged into. Even being on the very low end of the ARM spectrum, that little Cortex M0+ on the Pi Pico dwarfs an 8088 or 8086 no problem...At the same time, seeing the price of the Pi Pico, compared to what a PC cost when it was current tech, shows what giant leaps in development happened since.
There's actually two things that are really interesting about having the option of a new board with an MCU - first, that hobbyists can make new add-on cards without much difficulty now, and second - that for any given computing architecture, we can upgrade it to the level of that card. That removes any vintage limitations - the capability of all the computers is all "at the same level" now, limited just by development time. You can make this kind of upgrade for a PC, or an Apple II, or an Amiga, or anything else that you could figure out a way of shoehorning in, and you can make upgrades that copy the capabilities associated with one to the others.
It inverts the usual thing of having to make software drivers that deal with hardware: a piece of "smart hardware" like this can act as the driver for something like a USB mouse.
And, the module contains a WIFI module which itself likely uses even more powerful CPU inside.
@@k4be. Exact :) The Wifi module is faster than the RP2040, like graphic card are faster than the PC.
The important is that the Pico is not used to accelerate the PC CPU. It adds options that were possible on these PC : HDD, Floppy, Network, Adlib. All this were used on 8088 PC back in the time.
This thought crossed my mind a couple of years ago when I bought an Atari 800XL with a FujiNet device. The FujiNet is just a relatively tiny device that plugs into the back of the computer and seems like just a peripheral that's helping the computer out a little like an extra hand on a person, but really it's taking data from a network or an SD card and running circles around the Atari with its processing power to dumb things down to a level that the Atari can easily handle. It's more like the Atari is a peripheral for the FujiNet simply for the purpose of giving it a more nostalgic interface rather than simply using an emulator.
@@freddyvretrozone2849not faster, dolt, but swifter
That's amazing how retro hardware enthusiasts make new quality of life improvements to decades old hardware. Very nice!
I've been playing with one of these and it really is a total game changer for these old PCs. If you're reading this - get one!
In addition to being fantastic, the design of the setup utility is just beyond great. Superlatives aside, all of us in the retro community owe a debt of thanks to developers who have taken inexpensive modern hardware, like the pico, and opened an entire world of possibilities.
I love your joy and enthusiasm Adrian.
I think theres a place both for cards like this that do everything by basically adding a whole faster computer inside, and recreations using modern parts to do things the same way real vintage expansion cards did it. Its great having cards like this for ease of use (and honestly this looks *great* especially the BIOS menu!) but cards with a bunch of TTL and whatever are great too because thats all part of retro computing!
This is cool. Nice to see convergence like this. In the day I wanted to know every last aspect of the PC. I got too busy to do that. I'm amazed at the detailed knowledge necessary to implement this idea! PS, the right words for LIM (Lotus-Intel-Microsoft) memory is "expanded". You can't get "extended" memory on less than a 286. EMM386 has options for dividing memory into expanded and extended memory side by side. The "/noems" switch prevents the default allotment. The earliest essential use of extended memory was in Netware 286. There was an DOS executable that did nothing but switch to protected mode and set up a large flat model address space for the OS to inhabit. Actual memory protection was not required and not used. That was essentially the birth of the practical LAN.
Humans are amazing. I can't even begin to imagine how complex this was to create.
Adrian, for the record, the other BBS user was in Brazil. Criciuma is a city in Santa Catarina (also abbreviated SC).
I had to go back and pause the video, couldn't believe it! 😂 What are the odds!?
Probably using a MSX 8 bit computer and the UNAPI Telnet client ❤
The term "PSRAM" refers to Psuedo-static RAM, meaning that it is DRAM that can refresh itself without external refresh circuitry, and be simply wired onto a board like it was SRAM. It does not necessarily mean that it's accessed over an SPI bus. But on this device, it looks like it is indeed on an SPI bus.
A Raspberry as a universal ISA card...stunning, simply stunning.
TBH these machines were not meant to run for more than what, 4-5 years? I have a basement full of 80s and 90s PCs that work fully, even an NES and a Genesis (which is on now, we're taking stages in beating Sonic 2 lol). I can't seem to recall any newer consoles or computers working for even 10 years.
38:19 - that is no South Carolina. Criciuma SC it's a city here in Brazil, I am pretty sure of it!😊
Neat to see a Leading Edge here. It was my first XT clone PC when I was a kid - though I had the older Model M. It was enough to pirate a bunch of CGA games from my friend whose dad had nearly every PC game in existence going back to the original IBM PC days.
When I got a newer 486, I took the Model M and threw it out of the third story window of my parents' house onto the driveway to see what would happen. It landed flat with a huge smack, nothing fell off or exploded out of it. I brought it back inside, hooked it up, and it still worked - except for the hard drive.
That thing was pure steel like a tank, like so many PCs in those days.
What's so great about this "New Tech for Old Tech" is that it enhances the Old Tech to work in a modern environment without detracting too much from the retro experience --- and makes retro computing more affordable by bypassing the high prices of rare cards and peripherals. (No wonder Adrian is so enthusiastic about this project!)
Just a slight correction. SparkFun developed the QWIIC connector.
@Adrian, at 38:19, it's not South Carolina, it's Criciúma, state of Santa Catarina in Brasil.
Thank you for the video, it took me more than 30 years ago.
I bought a couple of RP Picos a couple of years ago with the intention to create revolution. Did nothing with them. Very nice to see these gadgets using the RP2040. Wow!!
This card is just awesome to say the least! It blows me away how versatile that the Pi Pico really is, and it's a great way to keep these old computers going as well as unlock new capabilities such as WiFi, etc.
Tired: it works perfectly
Wired: it Just Freakin Works!
It works alright.
(eats Snickers bar)
IT FRICKIN WORKS!!
(In Olde English accent) "Your soundcard works perfectly."
This is an important parallel between new and old technology that is instructive for all of us
It's crazy what people are coming up with to keep old computers running. I love it!
Maybe I'm strange, but I like loud fans and loud whirring hard drives on my vintage computers... Makes them sound like a living beast!
What an amazing card! I can’t wait to see the future development of it! Thanks for showing it to us!
That is really cool. I personally have no use for it, but I love learning about these things. Nice work to the developer/designer of this thing, keep up the good work. Back in the late 90s I thought it would be cool to collect some old machines once I was finished with school and living on my own ... but I realized I probably wouldn't actually end up doing anything with them, and as computers have generally become so much easier to deal with (no IRQs, networking by default, USB, faster CPUs, etc), I've had less and less interest in doing it. But I do love living vicariously through your videos.
For years I was looking for such an "all in one" solution for the Schneider (Amstrad) PC1512 I inherited after my father sadly passed away in 2021. This is a very nostalgic machine for me as this was the first time, I ever played videogames together with my dad, while he used this PC mostly to program in Turbo Pascal etc. Should also be a nifty solution for backing up all those files that are for sure soon lost to time because of those aging floppys and floppy drives (the PC1512 I have here only came with dual 5 1/4" floppy drives and no HDD).
I develop the PicoMEM with the PC1512 on mind it was also my first computer.
@@freddyvretrozone2849 Amazing! I'll hope there will be a seller located in Europe soon, as sadly importing one from the US is quite expensive because of import duties and shipping.
Without any further ado...I'm still waiting for the "let's get right to it!"
It's like an if-then statement that never gets met. You're just waiting forever ;-)
GDI! _YOU'RE_ the one who bought that Model D out from under me! That setup is literally what my first computer growing up was. Although ours was dual-floppy when bought, I paid for a hard drive+controller from lawn mowing/babysitting money. We even had that same monitor.
I had an AT 286 12mhz. My first mod was saving up and adding a sound blaster card.
The one improvement id like to see is a header to be able to use an external or front panel/bay mountable card reader. The big advantage of using an XTIDE and GoTek in my current 5160 is having the usb and cf card ports mounted right in the 2 right drive bays of my machine for access (the half height 32mb RLL HDD that still works and 360k floppy are on the left). Getting to the back of the machine to change out an SD card would be a serious PITA where I have my 5160 set up. I like the idea of this card though, and might consider it in future for another machine! Good job!
I don't think this card "obsoletes" a bunch of cards, what it does is make these capabilities available via modern components. The biggest problem I see with "Adlib" cards is getting the sound chips. If the Pico can emulate the sound chip, and it can emulate the 5v chips of the XT IDE, and it can emulate other peripherals, all while using a software designed "hardware stack", that's great. It would be interesting to see someone emulate an XT from scratch with video support on a Pico, then maybe tie multiple picos together to make a modern hardware emulator? Yeah, at that point it's not far removed from Dos Box, but it's still hardware and that scratches an itch that Dos Box doesn't.
Oh man those original IBM XT keyboards are AMAZING!
So cool. Would like to see something like this adapted to the PCjr... maybe with a DMA controller thrown in for good measure.
I ordered a picomem. My XT has a hard card and two floppy drives, I just don't have a system other than my XT with a 5 in floppy drive. I have been stuck. I love that I can finally replace my hard card, and get files onto the system. Looking forward to playing with this isa card.
I used to work at a PC Shop in Alexandria Virginia and I used to repair and sell the Leading Edge Model D!
I watched the majority of this video before I realized that you're wearing AJ's Forgotten Machines t-shirt. AJ is part of our CoCo community at Glenside, and he's a really great guy. Looking for ward to seeing you at VCFMW.. only 112 days (but who's counting!!)
Thanks for this review / walk through, Adrian :)
What I'm seeing here is an excellent "first stop" for an ISA card to put in a resurrected XT / AT and get it going. - A "Swiss Army Knife" ISA card that will get one out of most jams. Certainly a "must have" for those restoring XTs.
I think those dedicated RAM expansion and controller replacement cards still have a use-case in terms of performance / compatibility.
Thanks Adrian. I ordered one. Also, I’m glad you have recovered your health.
"It just freaking works" (TM)
That thing's pretty cool. I hope a 16-bit ISA slot version gets released at some point. I don't personally care about XT-class machines; they're too slow and limited to do much with. But a lot of those features would be really handy on an 386 or newer, especially one with limited room for ISA cards like my Toshiba T5200.
Especially if they can add a CD-ROM emu where you can load CD images on virtual drives like they've done here with floppy and HDD. Man that would be cool. Absolute epitome would be an easy way to connect full powered Pi for MT-32 midi emulation. Feels like the sky's the limit on this whole concept.
what a fantastic device! could breathe an insane amount of life into some of those XT class machines in tiny tiny cases that are incredibly difficult to expand - like my (sadly long-gone) childhood Amstrad PC20.
Just ordered one as I was still looking for a integrated network solution. Very nice demonstration about the capabilities and hopefully it improves over time.
Very interesting little board. I must confess that this is the first time I have ever heard of it.
Thank you for explaining so clearly. I can't wait to try the picomem
I'm building an A8PicoCart, a software defined Atari 8-bit cartridge. I've also seen SIDPICOs that use the PICO too. They are $3-5 for a 16MB version. Supercheap.
It's wild what that little Raspberry Pi Pico is capable of! Super neat!
that's absolutely incredible! 😍 so cool to see the retro computer community keeping old machines alive with things like this. Excellent video Adrian, thank you for making it!
This was a happy video in my feed :) Thanks! I managed to watch only 1/10th of the video before jumping to conclusions and ordering a PicoMEM of my own. And then I ordered the Adlib emulator too. So I managed to spend a truckload of money. Here's hanging my hopes high :)
The machine I'm aiming at putting it into is a very special one. An IBM PC 5150 with some exceptional history (which will be shared at the right time)
Thanks for a very interesting and useful video!
16:42 watching this while distracted I was surprised to suddenly see a gnome head pop out of nowhere! (The IDE cable kinda looks like a red pointed hat, face, and blue beard.)
Watching this video from start to finish shows how good this is
Good to see you with the Leading Edge Model D again, and I can't thing of a better reason that another card making retro possible without pain.
I may look into one of these for my PS/2 Model 25- when I get the thing back together. NTP support would be really nice in the future.
I don't remember ANSI.SYS being terribly slow- at least in DOS 4.01 which is what I had on my first PC. My 5150 is currently running PC-DOS 2000.
The person on the BBS wasn't from South Carolina, they were from Santa Catarina, Brazil. As Brazilians, we're like germs, we're everywhere, LOL!
I learned how to type on a model D! We had a whole computer lab full of them with amber monochrome amber screens!
Loved the "geekout-o-rama". Thanks. Flash back on the BBS.
Adrian, one note: when you connected to bbs the other user connected was not from South Carolina, but actually from Criciuma, Santa Catarina - Brazil hahaha
Regards from Brazil ;)
Thanks for the review, Adrian. The card is already backordered on Texelec as of 5/20/2024. So they maybe had a day or two supply.
Adrian, this is an amazing rindown on this card - grat explanation of the advantages and dissadvantages. Its great to see it in use and see how itnworks. 😊
I think the best use of this card would be for testing. Because you could drop it into the machine, and have it emulate a lot of stuff, meaning you only have to troubleshoot the MB or video card, or sound card, or whatever without worrying about other vintage parts not playing well with others.
Hi Adrian, thanks for the tip about this product. I will use it to resurect my old Tulip SX Compact 2 which was my first computer. It is actually a Dutch made 386sx and is still working except for the 3,5" floppy. Replacing that floppy drive with others I have (I remember even trying that when it first failed). Would you happen to know why other floppy drives simply refuse to work on a 386sx?
So much MSDOS coming back to me. It's been so long. Fun video and an absolutely amazing card. If I ever wanted to get back into DOS, this would be the way to go.
I once hand-built an ISA POST-code reaader board. How far we've come!
And I thought it was pretty cool connecting my graphing calculator to the internet via an ESP32. This is very cool.
Now I want to see this with the new RP2350 (or Raspberry Pico 2 board)!
What a cool device, I love what people are doing to keep old computers alive, even if this is the engine equivelant of connecting a 1000hp dragster engine to your 80 hp cars motor to use as it's starter 😂
Maybe a closer analogy would be upgrading the radio in your classic car for bluetooth instead of AM radio. Your car engine is unchanged. Maybe some new tires for safer traction etc.
The RP2040 is truly a versatile device - I don't have an old PC for this, but I DO have an Atari STE and am using a device called the SideCART - maybe a future video idea? Plugged into the ST's cartridge port, it does things such as RTC, floppy (even loading from internet) and HDD emulation. Like this device, the SideCART is still in (very) active development. Worth checking out!
I'd prefer to use period correct hardware. Nice project though.
This can be exciting if there would be a PCMCIA version of it for all the HP 100LX, 200LX and all the other 8086 palmtops out there.
It is not possible to boot from pcmcia right? Option rom thing
@@henrikgustav2294 I am not sure, my SD to PCMCIA adapter is capable of booting from it, can not speak for all versions of these adapters. Yet, there are PCMCIA floppies that most Toshiba Libretto computers boot from, also let’s not forget the PCMCIA CD-ROM drives which are bootable, that is how I installed OS/2 Warp to my Gateway 486DX2-66
One thing they should think about is doing a DOS IFS (like MSCDEX or one of the network drivers) which pushes the actual filesystem implementation onto the RP2040. It'll be less compatible than the existing BIOS emulation, but it would completely avoid the problems with big filesystems on DOS --- you could access the entire SD card in a single partition.
I think it's neat that people still make brand new items for ancient tech. The only sad/hilarious thing is, the new part is so much more powerful than the computer it's connected to is like getting an 18 wheeler to push a shopping cart....
Amazed! I was watching the entire video with my mouth open. Ordered
As a vintage comp user, my tandy 1000RL-HD only has one ISA slot, so while I would like to spend 100s buying the whole line up, I couldn't use them all and couldn't afford them all, this picomem is my saviour...
Hi, Please wait a little until I add support for Tandy 1000 (In my short term objectives)
I have one of these for my Sega TeraDrive. It's the perfect Swiss Army Knife for any 8086 and even slow 286s!
Is there a Board with a RaspberryPi, which you can put in a XT/AT System, wich allows you to use Keyboard, Diskrive, all the Ports on the Backside and Harddrive like the PiStorm or Vampire Project for Amiga?
That would be cool!
rp2040 is basically 2x (dual core) i486 or even Pentiums, integer speed wise IIRC, so that card is like adding a whole computer into your computer to emulate stuff for it ;)
Growing up, my first PC was a Leading Edge Model D.
I might buy an old PC just to use this thing. Amazing
This really has ridiculous potential. Lots of shenanigans you can potentially get up to if you put custom firmware on something like this or add hardware to available GPIO pins of the microcontroller.
I need to get an XT and one of these things and see what can be done.
I had a leading edge growing up. A later 386 model. We had it up until like i dunno 1999 or 2000. It couldn't do a whole lot but I was also too young to know how to get it to do much. I did pick up a fair bit of shareware off of AOL though like ant attack and empipe.
That’s a really cool card. Wish I still had an XT to play with!
Hey, I just noticed I’m wearing my Forgotten Machines shirt today too! 😂
You remembered it slightly off. The number is 64ms. Security researchers have shown that approximately the square root of the memory size is poor, leaks like a sieve, and needs to be refreshed at least every 64ms. Most of the memory is drastically better than that, and can usually hold its contents for minutes, or even longer. This is why full system memory encryption is necessary. You can just unplug memory sticks and plug them into another board and almost all of the memory content is unaffected. Sure, some small amount will corrupt. You are seeing how well cold boot attacks can work. Simplistic systems that were oblivious about security, like your board there, will not clear RAM - you can just reboot and read the RAM content.
Just ordered one! Messing around with a Zenith eazypc that was supposedly not expandable and that uses XTA HD interface. Turns out that the expansion port is just a pin version of Isa bus. Will see what we can get out of it with the PicoMem all in one!
Just went for a quick look and now 45 minutes are gone. Fascinating stuff.
I’m generally not a fan of using SBCs for emulation that overpower the system itself by many factors, but this does look like a neat piece of work and the bios interface makes for a great not-quite time period appropriate setup. Also, using wifi for networking beats running coax cable again and trying to plug that into a 21st century router 😇
Imagine if a faster version of an RP2040 processor comes out. If I had an old PC I would get one. My first PC was made by Epson and had a Cyrix 486 50MHz with 8MB of RAM (upgraded to 64MB due to possible bad RAM which caused Win 96 to BSOD almost every time you closed a window). Never had anything older than that except my Grandfather's Mac Classic I inherited after his death.
I love how people are creating new products for old computers.
Hi Adrian, i use 2 the Pico cards in my Atari. The Sidecart device in the Atari ST has simular abilities. And the A8Pico for my 800XL. Great devices. Thanks for the video.
The 286 supported high memory (HMA) because it supported memory above the first megabyte. If I remember correctly, 286 went up to 24 bits of address space. Not sure if that PicoMEM could support HMA though, as I'm not sure that A20 is brought out on that older 8 bit ISA bus.
Theoretically, the traditional 8086 could have supported high memory if Intel had exposed A20. HMA works by setting a segment register to FFFF, and offsetting past the end of the first megabyte for up to 65520 bytes of memory above the first megabyte. However, because the 8086 doesn't have A20, that address space wraps to the low 64.
PC compatible machines that have a CPU with an A20 line also typically have a fabulous hack to enable the A20 line in their chipset so they can reproduce the traditional wrap to address 0 behavior for the HMA. This is traditionally done using an AND gate attached to the 8042 keyboard controller.
I believe Compact (or someone) created a "fast A20" hack that does it through I/O port 92h. There was a patent on using port 92h to enable A20 for years; not on the hardware implementation, but on writing to the I/O port in software!
Slightly pedantic, but "high memory" in PC terms is the 64KiB of memory above 1MiB which can be utilised on 286+ due to the segmentation of memory allowing segment FFFF to map the 21st address line (A20) instead of wrapping back to the beginning.
UMBs are just upper memory, above the arbitary RAM/IO boundary, which is usually *but not always* 640KiB, but below 1MiB.
This is great for Amiga users with an XT bridgeboard since it does a lot of stuff and yet only takes up one 8-bit slot.
I have a question, in your opinion what causses the yellow screen during booting a commodore amiga 500?
I have nothing to put this card into but I still want one.
Interesting that Adrian didn't notice that 'Extention' is always misspelled in the Setup Utility.
Any more features and this board will become it's own standalone computer. It basically already is! LOL! Nice piece of work...
That is a really cool project!
The floppy disc switching would be a nice feature, though, especially for multi-disk games or a new DOS installation or something like that :)
Hi, it is already present (Ctrl Shift F2 shortcut)
@@freddyvretrozone2849 That's really cool, so you will go into the Phoenix-like BIOS and can change the floppy image there? That is neat!
Oh and btw, do you have any idea where I would get that "tools" disc that Adrian always uses with all the test software on it? Just playing around with PCem, just found that and the ROMs and having a blast! :D
Question Adrian. Is there any chance you could share some of your DOS HDD images?