PicoMEM - One ISA card to rule them all. HDD/Floppy/RAM/Mouse/WiFi/POST Code
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ค. 2024
- FreddyV has given us a new ISA8 card with Hard drive and floppy emulation that is faster than anything out there. EMS, UMB and 736KB Conventional memory. WiFi support. And this is just the beginning.
Github: github.com/FreddyVRetro/ISA-P...
Buy: texelec.com/product/picomem/
00:00 - Intro
00:28 - The Setup
00:52 - 736KB Conventional Memory
01:03 - Even more memory
01:16 - Hard drive emulation breaks all barriers
02:00 - Current features
02:32 - Coming features
03:10 - How is this done?
04:15 - PicoGUS?
05:16 - Setup / BIOS
08:45 - What does Retro Erik think about the PicoMEM?
09:45 - Leisure Suit Larry 3 - and possibly women...
Link to USE!UMBS thread on VCFed: forum.vcfed.org/index.php?thr... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Some make LEDs flash with these microcontrollers and others build such wonderful expansion cards. Sincere respect and high esteem!
As far as retrocomputing is concerned, these are great times to live in, with all this new clever hardware!
Those new nice gadget show us two things 1) how really out of balance early (and not so early) PC-s were due budget concerns b) HOW fast a 1980s machine REALLY could be if all periherals work at "full speed" and only bottleneck is 8-bit ISA bus.
Makes me sorry to have gotten rid of my two Tandy 1000 machines (over 25 years ago). I could have been having lots of fun with them now. And unlike the mid/late 1990's, I don't find old 8-bit computers in tag sales or thrift shops anymore.
@@SenileOtaku It currently has issues with Tandy 1000 machines. Due to the Tandy using a different memory map. I am sure this can be handled with a separate bios build though.
Looks like a great project!
Given that it has WiFi support, a NetDrive client would be a nice addition, too. This way one could boot an old PC off the network, using a remote hard disk image, with no need for client-side drivers.
I have used Netdrive with the PicoMEM. It's possible to boot from a Floppy with NetDrive on. And with PicoMEM you have a emulated floppy. Or you could of course boot from emulated hdd on the PicoMEM.
@@RetroErikIt's great that you've got that checked out! It's definitely an option to boot from a virtual floppy and then mount a remote NetDrive. Direct, built-in support for NetDrive would be just a nice next step.
Old Net/Sys Admin here... WOW! Nice video. That card would have been nice way back in the day. I haven't seen 4DOS in decades.
As you can i see i use 4DOS even on an 8088.
I'd love to see a 16-bit ISA version, for faster Data I/O transfers.
And maybe a VLB version too.
Blows my mind that we can use an advanced miniature computer as life support for a much older one.
this is an real love to retro computers, it was nice to watch this video , don't know why I enjoyed so much to watch this video , but indeed I did. So thank you for sharing this with us.
Thank you, Erik, for putting together this most excellent video!
When will YOU do your Review on this one? 😊
Maybe it's a good Expansion for the Tandy 1000s ? 😊
@@arnolda.lampel6087 haha perhaps! Doesn't work in Tandy 1000s right now. I could make a video at some point I presume.
Very nice project, can it work along with existing MFM controller (using only drives 3+4)?
Wow!! Thats so cool, I need this for my 286 as it's rather limited at the moment
CTRL+ALT+ESC = BIOS at ANY time (well mostly)
I had its big brother, the EURO XT with a 20Mb HDD :) That was my first pc, where I saw my first 2400Bps modem being installed which started my computer related career :)
(Side note, killed that modem by running it at 9600Bps for about 6hours, too long for it not to burn due to overclock hehe)
This is awesome, and would be fantastic for my future 80286 project that I have in mind.
Thanks!
Quite interesting what people are getting up to with micro controllers these days. Wonder if the PiStorm route would be doable as there's only so much bandwidth on the ISA bus and the cost of bit-banging the CPU might be worth it. As a side note, you're NOT limited to what one micro controller can do, you're just limited to how fast they can talk to each other ;)
Thanks for the great video. It explains a lot and will help me use my PicoMem card to the fullest. I hope it will work with the EuroPC 1 in the future as it currently unfortunately doesn't.
I never owned one of the DOS PC's, because i did realtime hardware development, and disliked the idea of all those jumpers and stuff, so i had a z80 system, then a motorola VMEbus Unix box, then a Mac.... but, great project, very original thinking, and something that one could probably design for similar functions in the "original" Macintosh.
Well, to get around the lack of CD image support, in most cases with older titles, you can simply copy them to a hard drive. In this case, either using a software like dosbox to create a hard drive image, and mount both it and the CD image, copy the contents, and then move the image to pico mem and mount as an additional drive. Or create a new hard drive image with the pico mem, and use networking to copy the CD contents from another PC over the network into the new drive image. Or even simpler, for titles that don't need to be seen on another drive letter, and don't care that they're just in another folder on the drive, forgot the 2nd drive image and just use the network to copy them from another PC to a folder on your existing drive. Though there are some titles, esp copy protected ones that are smart and will look for themselves on an optical drive only, at which point, you'll have to wait for CD image support unless you can do it from whthin DOS.
Some of you maybe saw that the i used version 2.0 of USE!UMBS, this could be the cause of my instability when using UMB. In versjon 2.2 of USE!UMBS is clears the memory (i beleive) before it uses it. I will do more tests with USE!UMBS v2.2
Hi
USE!UMB 2.0 has an hardcoded RAM location from D000h to EFFFh, and the PicoMEM BIOS plus its ram is inside. (If you used the xxx_D0 firmware)
I'd like to see a modern 8-bit multi-IO card which emulates the features of the AST SixPack or Sigma Designs Maximizer.
Amazing what this pi pico can do. More power than the actual pcs at the time, but that is beside the point. 😅
do you have a 286 you can try it on? ive been waiting for the card to be fully opensourced for use on a 286.
I have tried it on a 286 - 12 Mhz. Worked almost perfectly. I had trouble getting WiFi, i believe its the thick heavy steel cabinet that causes it. Floppy and hdd worked great. I could not extend conventional memory since the 286 had 1MB already. I did not try EMS.
Nice project I hope it succeed, I don't think I can get one but this kind of project would help a lot with old computers
Helping old computers is what its all about. 😀
Amazing work there.
the good old days.....
Awesome project!!
Yes it is. And this is only the beginning.
i think i'll get one, i plan to have some retro machines and have almost enough to build one
PC XT Forever! Thanks!
What I'd really like to see is a floppy drive controller (maybe added IDE too) that uses a PCI or PCIe slot. Not USB, not anything else that might shortcut the deal. Just a floppy (+IDE) card that would be usable in modern PCs. THAT would be something I would invest in. Greatly. Controls every floppy from 160KB thru 2.88MB. Maybe even 8" control too, why not?
Very cool!
Love it where cani it be bought ?
I like the chips labeled
friggin wicked!
this is awesome. also is that computer you using Tandy compatible???
No It's a EuroPC, has Plantronics mode.
On the GITHUB one of the limitations is choices need to be made to choose which features you want to turn on. Due to limited pico performance. Can you go into a bit of what can and cannot be used together?
FreddyV is the best to answer this, but i will try. WIth the features today, this is not a problem, but one could imagine a future where more feature would be limited by the Pico CPU. Today an yfeatures can be turned on/off, i would guess all new features will also be possible to turn off. And lastly, fatures does not use CPU for just beeing on, they have to be used. Since this card is mostly used from DOS - at least for me. I would not be using disk, cd-rom, network and GUS at the same time.
The limitations will be more on audio. Everything else work "together " as the PC is not multi task.
@@freddyvretrozone2849 Thank you for responding! That makes sense now.
I hope we get Bin/cue support.
My bracket in PETG is not very well printed, I need to dig more on how to print PETG.
On the picomem side, I need to explore the new version too, I have it on my desk for a month.
In the case of WiFi there's reason in using them, but for other brackets try just bending some cheap aluminum flashing or similar sheet metal instead of plastic. All that you need for tools is a handheld drill, sheet metal shears (and preferable some metal files for holes), some pliers, a marker or something to mark out measurements, and an plan. Rare tools like sheet metal breaks aren't needed because the brackets are so small and simple.
Wait, with this i dont need xt ide, ps/2 keyboard, serial mouse, network card, floppy usb emulator, ide cf, wifi repeater for the network, lan cable?
Anyone know where I can find the PCB design files, or at least some pinout info? I'd like to try adapting the design to the proprietary expansion card bus inside my T1000 laptop, but I don't know if it's got all the required signals broken out. I'm hoping most of the ISA pins on back of the PiccMem card aren't actually used...
Hi,
I did not decide yet when I will have it public. I Shared it with some person already. A Book8088 design is under test for example.
All this is really the begining.
@@freddyvretrozone2849 could I ask you to post a pic of the back of the card? That would let me tell if my idea is even possible.
There's a point where you are no longer using a retro PC, but an ARM compute module with old peripherals connected.
It should be considered whether you would be better off with PCem and no vintage hardware.
Hi,
I understand, but a Sound Blaster is a microcontroller connected to ISA, a Gravis UltraSound is an even more powerfull microcontroller connected on a PC, some soundcard has a 68000 on them A Graphic card has GPU more powerfull than the PC as well.
The PicoMEM Does not accelerate the PC, It add functionality that did exist (Disk, RAM, Mouse...) but with more modern interface/peripherals.
When I did the picoMEM, I was thinking about all the person wondering how to use their retro PC with a Dead HDD and no Floppy.
And also al the person with cool XT with one ISA Slot that can finally better use them.
clever af
I did not know it was possible to add RAM to a PC via an ISA slot...even a small amount. 286s are slightly before my time, though, so maybe that's something that was lost on 386 and newer?
Architecturally it never stopped being possible. You can still do it on a modern computer on the PCI express bus. But you'll have to write your own software to take advantage of that expanded memory.
Yes it was useless because too slow.
The point it broke was basically after the 486. VLB allowed full speed access on 486, but PCI is more packetish (address before data on the same bus) and the memory controller was moved onto a faster north bridge bus. You still could access an ISA memory expansion via PCI-LPC-ISA but it couldn't compete with primary RAM. Compare e.g. swap to VRAM.
There's no magic with the ISA bus since it's connected directly to the address and data bus of the CPU. Add RAM in the address space and it'll work.
Yes there were many memory ISA expansion cards back in the day but they rapidly disappeared because the ISA bus, at 8 MHz was too much of a speed bottleneck. It was slow ram as computers got faster.
This was possible before. They were called expansion boards or expansion memory boards. But you needed a driver for that and then EMS Memory was provided. However, EMS memory is only suitable for data, not for program code.
Wow!
the pico literally has 13 times the clockrate thats insane lmaooo
Hi,
If you calculate the number of instruction needed to detect signal edge, move 2 time multiplexer, read address low, address high, data, decode the address, read the value and return it in 200ns, this is not that much.
I see lot of comment like this here, but nobody realize it is Hardware emulated by software, we can't compare one by one with MHz....
Have you tested this card with EuroPC 1? Thanks for the video!
Yes i have, did not find the PicoMEM. I have dialog with FreddyV on this issue, so I am doing som test for him. I have received a diagnostic program he wrote for the PicoMEM.
@@RetroErik Thank you. Please keep us posted on this issue!
@@RetroErik Any news regarding EuroPC 1 support? Thanks.
@@delysio FreddyV has made a new firmware for me to try, i will test it this weekend.
@@RetroErik Awesome! Please report.
this is a interesting project, , PicoMEM ISA a to busy to do vdu graphics , I seen some doing Pico graphic card, would interesting to see coming together two projects, and sure there's someone out working on a Pico sound card? stack then all next to each over with very basic, ,ISA card bus, the same at really alley PC the PC motherboard was real just ISA card its self, plugged in a ISA card bus board interconnected ISA card connector slots and not much else a bit power and that was it?
Hi
There is the PicoGUS soundcard.
VGA pico based design only use the VGA connector, they are not VGA.
A True VGA card based on pico is extremely difficult to do...
what's the song used throughout this video?
magical sound shower or passing breeze from sega's Outrun
Outrun first, than Under A Killing Moon - Tex's Office.
I was looking for the same. I recognized it immediately but couldn't think of what game it was from. But now I remember it was from many hours of my Master System running with outrun in the slot.
I need.
dumb question, would this work on a ibm 5150?
Check github. But yes I think so.
Yes it work, I spent 3 months to have it working on it.
nice card, but is there a 16bit one that has some sim slots that would be epic.
Hi,
Thanks.
16bit require 2 things:
- more gpio pin, the pico cant.
- Support the ISA no wait state, the pico is not fast enaugh.
Maybe my project will give ideas for others, it show it may be possible.
@@freddyvretrozone2849yeah for sure on its own. I am trying to think of what might ESP32 comes to mind, but still need a switch.
Sorry I just been thinking of something like this for sometime might as well start with ISA as its far more simple well in someways.
@@freddyvretrozone2849 LPC maybe on the pico side and ISA on the other using a bridge chip, sure it complicates the project but that bridge chip if it would world like that could add more functions.
The other one i was thinking of is ESP32 I think it does have a larger GPIO and has a faster clock, but not sure if its actually faster.
but anyway, love the project I will be watching.
It is a great project but what I really wanted is a VGA out from these
Graphics is much harder
Garber file not available!
Hi,
No, not yet.
I feel like its impure to use a microcontroller that could emulate a whole 286 pc many times over to emulate a component in a 286. like using an F18 fighter jet to emulate a moped motor.
Amiga users would use Raspberry Pi as a CPU accelerator and then ANOTHER Pi as an HDMI output device (I believe you can use just one to do so nowadays). This seems like much less of an overkill xD
Hi,
Emulate hardware in software require lot of performance.
This is also not really fair to say that, as the pico is a 133mhz arm0 even not able to do floating point math.
Compared to the PiStorm to add a Pi5 in an amiga.
The Pico is a microcontroller and nobody complsin about the gotek.. that is doing the same.
The processor in a Commodore 1541 is just as fast as the one in the Commodore 64. And those are contemporary.
Same deal with the LaserJet II, which I saw deployed with two processors both outperforming the host.
@@0LoneTech And there are PC isa boards with 68000 😀
@@freddyvretrozone2849 Yes, the PostScript controller board for that LaserJet was one of those.
Is there any project like this for 386/486 machines with 16 bit ISA? This would help my old Compaq but 8 bit transfers for the drive portion would be sloooow as would network access compared to a NE2000 card with a ROM for drive mapping.
Scroll down to Tested machines. github.com/FreddyVRetro/ISA-PicoMEM
@@RetroErikYes it will work, however due to being an 8bit ISA card it will be exceptionally slow for large drive access and network performance. That's why I asked if there is a 16bit ISA project that is similar.
@@ReflexVE I don't believe so.
@@RetroTechChrisMaybe someday...
@@ReflexVE You think a factor 2 is exceptional? Let me introduce you to wait states and sector interleaving.
Why not just plug the newer RPi into the DIP socket for the CPU at this point? Just make an interposer and offload all non-x86 specific functions to the Pi and just go ludicrous speed.
I build this card as an anti amiga pistorm.
The game for amiga is to have faster machines (frustrated that amiga stop)
If someone want a faster IBM PC just take a more recent PC.
800kb is overkill on an 8bit structure
Got excited but then read Tandy 1000 is incompatible.
For now
@@RetroErik Right
Ah yes, the time honored classic of replacing the entire computer with another computer.
Hi,
It is not at all the case.
Nothing is replaced it is adding fonctionnality. It is not a Pistrom
Ah yes, the time honoured classic of exposing your ignorance to the internet in a sardonic attempt to sound intelligent.
The BGM makes it harder to hear your voice
;`
larryegapron
Very cool!