A8PicoCart - UnoCart on a Raspberry Pi Pico

[drpeter]

1 hour ago, Magic Knight said:

Currently the cheapest in the UK is £11 a piece from EBay 

True, but with P&P of £3.50 on top of that and without a cartridge shell.

[+mytek]

Just something to keep in mind... gold fingers should be used on carts. I know that adds a bit more to the cost, but it insures good conductivity for years.

 

I have a Kung Fu Flash cart I purchased for cheap off of eBay, but unfortunately didn't notice that it didn't have gold fingers. I would have gladly paid the extra to get this feature.

[rietveld]

just picked up an A8 pico cart 

 

It looks really good

[XL Freak]

On 5/3/2024 at 5:17 PM, mytek said:

Just something to keep in mind... gold fingers should be used on carts.

I didn't even think of that. Thank you! And you're right: It did raise the cost!

 

Edit: Actually, I need to withdraw my offer to sell these. And out of 20 carts I planned to produce, I'd have to sell almost all of them just to break even, and I don't have the finances right now to support that. And there didn't seem to be any interest anyway...

Edited May 6 by XL Freak

[+mytek]

12 hours ago, XL Freak said:

I didn't even think of that. Thank you! And you're right: It did raise the cost!

 

Edit: Actually, I need to withdraw my offer to sell these. And out of 20 carts I planned to produce, I'd have to sell almost all of them just to break even, and I don't have the finances right now to support that. And there didn't seem to be any interest anyway...

It wasn't my intention to dissuade you from selling Pico Carts when I mentioned gold fingers. It's just my preference, but not absolutely necessary, with many a 3rd party product not implementing it and seemingly doing well. But I for one would have no issues paying the difference to have it if buying a cart of any kind.

 

Truth be told I would build my own A8 Pico Cart anyway, since it's extremely easy and inexpensive to do. And I think this might be true for many reading this topic, so a manufacturer would have to go for volume to compete.

[rietveld]

9 hours ago, mytek said:

It wasn't my intention to dissuade you from selling Pico Carts when I mentioned gold fingers. It's just my preference, but not absolutely necessary, with many a 3rd party product not implementing it and seemingly doing well. But I for one would have no issues paying the difference to have it if buying a cart of any kind.

 

Truth be told I would build my own A8 Pico Cart anyway, since it's extremely easy and inexpensive to do. And I think this might be true for many reading this topic, so a manufacturer would have to go for volume to compete.

i paid $30 and it comes in a nice shell.  Not worth my effort to build for that price

 

[+mytek]

1 hour ago, rietveld said:

i paid $30 and it comes in a nice shell.  Not worth my effort to build for that price

 

That is good price. Where did you get it? Have a link?

 

Not that I intend to buy one myself, since I'm always ordering boards for my projects and can just add it to my order. I also have 10 Pico Boards in stock. Its not that I really needed that many, but ordering 10 from AliExpress was super cheap, and essentially gives me a lifetime supply..

[XL Freak]

@mytek no worries. my pickup has quit running and I'm waiting to see what the damage is, so no extra funds to purchase parts

 

[rietveld]

18 hours ago, mytek said:

That is good price. Where did you get it? Have a link?

 

Not that I intend to buy one myself, since I'm always ordering boards for my projects and can just add it to my order. I also have 10 Pico Boards in stock. Its not that I really needed that many, but ordering 10 from AliExpress was super cheap, and essentially gives me a lifetime supply..

i picked it up from a vendor at vcf east a few weeks ago  .  they were selling them for $30

[XL Freak]

As promised above, here's the cart shells from the gaming shop in town. Pictured is the first sample... I am really impressed with the quality of the 3d print job. It has a nice texture on the front and back sides. Everything snaps perfectly into place, and the recess for the logo plate has been removed. But Mikah (game shop owner) is a tinkerer and wants to give the cart a rounded top, similar to the Side3D cart I guess, and has a few issues to fix before they're ready to be sold (screw hole adjustments and inlaid logo), but it won't be long. Price is $4.50 each up to 19, and $3.38 each for 20+. Please contact him yourself. Contact info: Mikah Walters, MTech Cave, (918) 575-4596. Google Maps Plus Code: R9FC+3X Stilwell, Oklahoma

[XL Freak]

Coincidentally, since I'm now using the sample, I have a spare black resin cart shell, but I used too much superglue and it looks a bit messy. First one to send me $5 for shipping gets it. This is for the 3d printed cart shell only. No pcb...

[madness77]

Dear,

 

I am releasing another version of the design adapted to moulded enclosures. In addition, you can decide whether you want the reset button from the top or the front.

 

 

 

 

The gerber files and the design in KiCad are attached at the bottom. Also, I am attaching PDF files with the labels I designed in the ‘brown 400/800’ and ‘gray XL’ versions.

 

I hope you like it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the same time I encourage the community, as we did on the Polish forum atari.area, to place collective orders for PCBs. If one person collects orders for e.g. 10-20 boards, then with equal sharing of production and shipping costs, it comes out to about 2.5 USD per piece (gold-plated ENIG) for a person interested in DIY.

 

Order together with people from the same city/country, of course.

Why generate extra shipping/duty/taxes and CO2 costs

 

In summary, ordering the Pico purple clone for $2, the total cost together with the moulded case, when self-assembled (difficulty level: beginner) should be less than 15USD (shipping costs of components included).

 

 

Statement. I do not manufacture, sell or order the boards. I encourage interested people to work collectively. No, I am not a communist

 

A8PicoCart-PM-gerber-v1.2.zip label-brown.pdf label-gray.pdf

A8PicoCart-PM-v1.2.zip

Edited May 8 by madness77

[rietveld]

On 5/6/2024 at 10:23 PM, mytek said:

That is good price. Where did you get it? Have a link?

 

Not that I intend to buy one myself, since I'm always ordering boards for my projects and can just add it to my order. I also have 10 Pico Boards in stock. Its not that I really needed that many, but ordering 10 from AliExpress was super cheap, and essentially gives me a lifetime supply..

Here is the vendors website for the cheap A8 pico

https://techdungeon.xyz/

 

I don't see the a8 on there website. 

 

You may need to email them

michael@techdungeon.xyz

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 8 by rietveld

[Forrest]

FYI I saw the A8picoCart being sold on eBay in nice cases, starting at $27 with volume discounts available.

 

i noticed the seller has multiple listings on eBay, with slightly different cases. For an additional $2, you can get a case with the USB port exposed - helpful if you’ll be adding games to the cart.

Edited May 8 by Forrest

[00WReX]

Hello all,

A quick question please

I placed some 64k cartridges onto a PicoCart.
A few of them give an error when you attempt to run them.
"ERROR: CAR file is wrong size"
The size of the files is 65,552 bytes, for both the ones that work and the ones that error.
I tried the error files in altirra, and they all worked. I also tried a file from two different archives, with the same result. An example is thrust.car

 

Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks in advance.

[madness77]

3 hours ago, 00WReX said:

"ERROR: CAR file is wrong size"
The size of the files is 65,552 bytes, for both the ones that work and the ones that error.
 

Am I missing something obvious?
Thanks in advance.

Yes,

 

2^16 = 65536 (=64kB)

 

So  65,552  exceeds the permitted size by 16 bytes

 

please attach both files, maybe a problem with headers and correct type recognition?

 

Edited May 11 by madness77

[flashjazzcat]

And the mandatory CAR file header is sixteen bytes long, so 65,536 + 16 = 65,552. So the error message might be a little misleading.

[electrotrains]

4 hours ago, 00WReX said:

Hello all,

A quick question please

I placed some 64k cartridges onto a PicoCart.
A few of them give an error when you attempt to run them.
"ERROR: CAR file is wrong size"
The size of the files is 65,552 bytes, for both the ones that work and the ones that error.
I tried the error files in altirra, and they all worked. I also tried a file from two different archives, with the same result. An example is thrust.car

 

The firmware produces that error when a CAR file is not the size expected.

 

Given that in this case the file is the correct size for a 64k cartridge (+16 bytes of header), then the cartridge type (which is stored in the header) must be set to something other than a 64k cartridge (e.g. 8k or 16k).

 

e.g. the car type is 1 (in the header) for a standard 8k cartridge, so the firmware will expect a file that is exactly 8 x 1024 bytes + header.

 

If you want to post the files here, or send me a PM, I can take a look?

 

Robin

 

[00WReX]

Thanks for looking at this.

I have found quite a few 64k files that fail with this error.

Attached are two...

Blue Max 2001 (XL).car Thrust.car

[madness77]

Hmmm, both look like type 22:  32 KB Williams cartridge

 

https://github.com/dmlloyd/atari800/blob/master/DOC/cart.txt

Edited May 11 by madness77

[madness77]

 

atari_cart.c:

line 95: 

#define CART_TYPE_WILLIAMS_64K      15  // 32k/64k

 

 

line 431:

        else if (car_type == 22)    { cart_type = CART_TYPE_WILLIAMS_64K; expectedSize = 32768; }

 

 

and this causes this error to be displayed:

 

    if (car_file) {

        if (size != expectedSize) {

            strcpy(errorBuf, "CAR file is wrong size");

            cart_type = CART_TYPE_NONE;

            goto closefile;

        }

    }

 

 

@electrotrains: so there is some confusion here, since this type can be 64k long

 

 

Edited May 11 by madness77

[phaeron]

Altirra treats cartridge type 22 as Williams 32K and will chop an over-long image -- it does not promote a 64K image to Williams 64K.

 

IMO, rejecting a 64K type 22 image isn't necessarily wrong, and these images either should be truncated to 32K or changed to type 8 (Williams 64K). But then there's a purity/practicality factor.

 

 

[electrotrains]

@madness77, @phaeron thanks for the input.

 

Yeah - these seem to be the relevant lines of my code:
 

#define CART_TYPE_WILLIAMS_64K        15    // 32k/64k

if (car_type == 8)     { cart_type = CART_TYPE_WILLIAMS_64K; expectedSize = 65536; }
if (car_type == 22)    { cart_type = CART_TYPE_WILLIAMS_64K; expectedSize = 32768; }

 

So we do appear to have incorrectly 'typed' car files, but it would probably be best if I just updated the code to accept either if this is common.

This is exactly the same code as the UnoCart firmware, so its interesting this has taken so many years to come up 🙂

 

Will update the code when I get a spare minute,

 

Robin

 

[madness77]

1 hour ago, electrotrains said:

@madness77, @phaeron thanks for the input.

 

Yeah - these seem to be the relevant lines of my code [...]

Will update the code when I get a spare minute

Thanks,

 

BTW, all these files work on Ultimate cart without any problem

 

I see there is a simple workaround in the Ultimate code

ultimate.c line 309:

else if (car_type == 8 || car_type == 22) cart_type = CART_TYPE_WILLIAMS_64K;

 

Edited May 13 by madness77

[00WReX]

Thanks  @madness77 @phaeron @electrotrains

For looking into this.

 

I appreciate the efforts of all.

 

Cheers