A8PicoCart - UnoCart on a Raspberry Pi Pico

[flashjazzcat]

2 hours ago, johey said:

Looks like the cursor keys work without holding control?

The source code confirms that.

[+mytek]

7 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

9 hours ago, johey said:

Looks like the cursor keys work without holding control?

The source code confirms that.

Actually it shouldn't care whether the control key is held or not with the stock Atari arrow keys, and new new navigation commands got added along with TK-II specific keys as well. @manterola gets credit for implementing these changes 👍

[_The Doctor__]

Is this going to be another situation where the keys aren't read/handled from the common 800/XL/XE points? Haven't looked but it's a recurring theme over the years.

Edited Monday at 05:40 PM by _The Doctor__

[flashjazzcat]

57 minutes ago, mytek said:

Actually it shouldn't care whether the control key is held or not with the stock Atari arrow keys

I didn't imagine the question was whether the cursor works solely without the control key, but whether it works with or without the control key. And the source code shows that both the modified and unmodified control keys are dispatched:

main_loop
	jsr wait_for_vsync
	jsr GetKey
	beq check_joystick
	cmp #$1C ; cur up
	beq up_pressed
	cmp #'-'
	beq up_pressed
	
	cmp #$1D ; cur down
	beq down_pressed
	cmp #'='
	beq down_pressed

 

[+mytek]

4 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

I didn't imagine the question was whether the cursor works solely without the control key, but whether it works with or without the control key. And the source code shows that both the modified and unmodified control keys are dispatched:

If the question was in reference to navigating the A8pico-Cart's menu,..

I was simply trying to acknowledge that the firmware should respond in the same way irrelevant of whether the control key was pressed in combination with the arrow keys. And then in a much too abbreviated form I was further trying to elaborate on how the firmware has evolved to also do additional navigation functions such as a next and previous file listing functions both on a stock Atari keyboard or using special keys on the TK-II and similarly via the F1-F4 keys on a 1200XL.

 

By trying to reveal all the new navigation abilities in too brief of a way, I likely just confused matters - sorry.

 

Probably what would be good, is to create a keyboard map showing all the A8pico-Cart's menu navigation functions for all hardware use cases.

[00WReX]

On 5/13/2024 at 10:10 PM, electrotrains said:

@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

 

Hello,

 

Just wondering if you are able to perform this update, that would be nice (just bumping this so it’s not forgotten) 🙂

 

Cheers 

[ascrnet]

17 hours ago, 00WReX said:

Hello,

 

Just wondering if you are able to perform this update, that would be nice (just bumping this so it’s not forgotten) 🙂

 

Cheers 

Hi 00WReX,

 

Try this patch that I made to solve this inconvenience for my opinion the header is wrong. 😅

a8_pico_cart.uf2

regards

[Dopeyman06]

Hello. I hope it's ok for me to post this. It's A8PicoCart related

 

I ordered a few boards and recently got them in. From the batch, this one is the only one giving me problems. As soon as I plug it in, the lil light starts flashing. And won't mount on the desktop (on a Mac). I've flashed other boards, so I know the process. But this one is problematic. 

 

Is it fixable or is this a dead board?

[00WReX]

3 hours ago, ascrnet said:

Hi 00WReX,

 

Try this patch that I made to solve this inconvenience for my opinion the header is wrong. 😅

a8_pico_cart.uf2 191 kB · 2 downloads

regards

Thanks...I will try it 👍

[madness77]

9 hours ago, ascrnet said:

Hi 00WReX,

 

Try this patch that I made to solve this inconvenience for my opinion the header is wrong. 😅

a8_pico_cart.uf2 191 kB · 3 downloads

regards

Hi,

 

Could you publish your fix as a pull request to a repo on github?

 

This would transparently track code changes, allow others to build a core with the fix from source code, and prevent unofficial binary files from existing in nature

(As was the case with Ultimate Cart).
 

@electrotrains should approve such a fix after code review and prepare a new build version.

 

Thanks for your understanding, this is how it should be done.  

 

(Of course, releasing files for quick testing is OK.)

 

Best.

Edited yesterday at 09:52 AM by madness77

[00WReX]

10 hours ago, Dopeyman06 said:

Hello. I hope it's ok for me to post this. It's A8PicoCart related

 

I ordered a few boards and recently got them in. From the batch, this one is the only one giving me problems. As soon as I plug it in, the lil light starts flashing. And won't mount on the desktop (on a Mac). I've flashed other boards, so I know the process. But this one is problematic. 

 

Is it fixable or is this a dead board?

IMG_6981.MOV

Try the flash_nuke.uf2 from here...

 

https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/raspberry-pi-pico.html#resetting-flash-memory

 

And then try the a8_pico_cart.uf2

[woj]

1 hour ago, 00WReX said:

Try the flash_nuke.uf2 from here...

This saved my Pico boards twice so far 😉

[ascrnet]

5 hours ago, madness77 said:

Hi,

 

Could you publish your fix as a pull request to a repo on github?

 

This would transparently track code changes, allow others to build a core with the fix from source code, and prevent unofficial binary files from existing in nature

(As was the case with Ultimate Cart).
 

@electrotrains should approve such a fix after code review and prepare a new build version.

 

Thanks for your understanding, this is how it should be done.  

 

(Of course, releasing files for quick testing is OK.)

 

Best.

strange that you say that, I always do it.😎

 

For this last case I am waiting for the tests of the user @00WReX, as I did my own but with 2 cases a real 32k file and one of those 64k but it is actually a 32k game and they added 32k blank and in the .car header misconfigured the correct type.

 

I always share the previous version of my changes, sometimes it's good for you to read the whole thread. 😅

[Dopeyman06]

Thank you @00WReX and @woj for your comments. But the issue isn’t the flashing of the firmware. The issue is that it’s not mounting to be flashed. It just sits there with the lil blinking light. 

 

I’ve flashed several of these so I know the process. 
 

After trying with this pico and not mounting, I’d try it with another one and it would mount and flash as it should. So I know it’s not the cable. 

Any other ideas?

Edited yesterday at 03:10 PM by Dopeyman06

[madness77]

31 minutes ago, ascrnet said:

strange that you say that, I always do it.😎[...]

Yep, saw your commits

Cheers

[ascrnet]

25 minutes ago, Dopeyman06 said:

Thank you @00WReX and @woj for your comments. But the issue isn’t the flashing of the firmware. The issue is that it’s not mounting to be flashed. It just sits there with the lil blinking light. 

 

I’ve flashed several of these so I know the process. 
 

After trying with this pico and not mounting, I’d try it with another one and it would mount and flash as it should. So I know it’s not the cable. 

Any other ideas?

Reading your problem, it reminded me that something very similar happened to me once. it occurred to me to install picotools and a driver that is needed for win10. This caused the pico clone not to update directly by dragging the file. the solution was to remove that driver or use another computer. 😉

 

1 minute ago, madness77 said:

Yep, saw your commits

Cheers

of course, they take months. well, The changes I once made for ultimate cart took years. 🤣

[Dopeyman06]

1 hour ago, ascrnet said:

Reading your problem, it reminded me that something very similar happened to me once. it occurred to me to install picotools and a driver that is needed for win10. This caused the pico clone not to update directly by dragging the file. the solution was to remove that driver or use another computer. 😉

 

of course, they take months. well, The changes I once made for ultimate cart took years. 🤣

Again, the pico isn’t mounting at all to be flashed. It’s not showing up on my desktop to have the firmware drag/dropped onto it. 
 

But I’ll try that picotools suggestion with windoze 10 and the Mac.  Thank you!

Edited 22 hours ago by Dopeyman06

[00WReX]

9 hours ago, ascrnet said:

strange that you say that, I always do it.😎

 

For this last case I am waiting for the tests of the user @00WReX, as I did my own but with 2 cases a real 32k file and one of those 64k but it is actually a 32k game and they added 32k blank and in the .car header misconfigured the correct type.

 

I always share the previous version of my changes, sometimes it's good for you to read the whole thread. 😅

Thanks @ascrnet and sorry for the delay.

I just tried a group of 64k carts, including Williams 64k that previously failed.

Every one I tried worked fine 🙂

Thank you.

[ascrnet]

26 minutes ago, 00WReX said:

Thanks @ascrnet and sorry for the delay.

I just tried a group of 64k carts, including Williams 64k that previously failed.

Every one I tried worked fine 🙂

Thank you.

👍 thanks for the confirmation, I uploaded the change to github so that in the future this change can be considered by colleague @electrotrains