A8PicoCart - UnoCart on a Raspberry Pi Pico

[E474]

Hi @ascrnet, 

 

   I have an ST-Link USB Dongle, so can update the UnoCart (I have before), but I don't have a development environment for it (I think I had the Attolic (?) studio installed, but on my previous machine), so I will need to install that again, but I will try and do that today. Did you include the changes for UnoCart IO, in pio.s (and maybe other files), see: https://github.com/robinhedwards/UnoCart/blob/master/source/Atari/UnoCartOS/pio.s

 

    Thanks @DjayBee, I will try and get Altirra up and running under Wine, and give this a go.

 

   Hi @tebe , thanks very much for the info. I think using something like the Altirra debugger is the next step, as I believe it can be invoked on writes to memory ranges, and this will probably be the easiest way to catch what's causing the issue.

 

   Time wise things are looking a bit limited for today, but I am still curious as to what's causing this behaviour.

 

   

[ascrnet]

On 8/6/2023 at 9:31 AM, E474 said:

I have an ST-Link USB Dongle, so can update the UnoCart (I have before), but I don't have a development environment for it (I think I had the Attolic (?) studio installed, but on my previous machine), so I will need to install that again, but I will try and do that today. Did you include the changes for UnoCart IO, in pio.s (and maybe other files), see: https://github.com/robinhedwards/UnoCart/blob/master/source/Atari/UnoCartOS/pio.s  

I didn't include it, because I did something generic for both cartridges since I don't know yet if a8picocart will use that. As the github for this project is not available I just improvised.😅

 

Now that you mention it I should make another version including it for you to try it.

 

Regards

[E474]

Hi @ascrnet,

 

  OK, no worries, I haven't installed Atollic Studio (or whatever has replaced it) yet, and am a bit stuck with Altirra under Wine in Debian.

 

  The pio code handles IO with the UnoCart, and I am (reasonably) sure it would be the same with the PicoCart - you could have a look at the OS code in the PicoCart by booting an ATR with Bug65 or similar, and looking at the OS code the PicoCart is serving. 

 

  

[ascrnet]

On 8/7/2023 at 5:45 PM, E474 said:

  OK, no worries, I haven't installed Atollic Studio (or whatever has replaced it) yet, and am a bit stuck with Altirra under Wine in Debian. 

I just installed debian 12 and use winehq without problems to altirra it looks great nothing to do with wine, follow the steps in the link.

On 8/7/2023 at 5:45 PM, E474 said:

The pio code handles IO with the UnoCart, and I am (reasonably) sure it would be the same with the PicoCart - you could have a look at the OS code in the PicoCart by booting an ATR with Bug65 or similar, and looking at the OS code the PicoCart is serving. 

I already added the pio driver and the necessary changes in the same order as the old OS. it loads fine without problems in altirra but you can't test the pio that will be your task with your UnoCart.😉

CartOS_pio.zip

I attach everything in case you need to assemble again, to assemble I ran compiler.bat "yes I did it in Windows as I am still preparing my debian 12". 🤩

 

Regards

[E474]

Hi @ascrnet,

 

   Thanks very much, I will install the dev environment for the UnoCart, hopefully today, but more likely over or before the weekend.

 

   I am still on Debian 11, I will upgrade at some point, but am putting it off for a bit at the moment.

 

  Altirra runs fine under wine64 on Debian 11, but the help system doesn't work (I needed the keys for Start, Select and Option). What happens if you do Help -> Contents from the menu bar in Altirra? I got the help window table of contents, but the help pages themselves won't display (it displays "0036:err:mshtml:create_document_object Failed to init Gecko, returning CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE" in the console that I started wine in). I was using wine from the Debian repos, not from winehq, I might give winehq a go, but I only have 1 windows app that I want to use (Altirra), and now have the online help in HTML form, so it's good enough to use now. See this thread if your online help is broken: 

 

Am digging into using Altirra, at the moment I am booting a Translator, then Arcadia, and I get the same mangled display as you get from the PicoCart. I figure if I can track down what is causing this, then maybe I can figure out a fix, and it should be easier to do this under Altirra than on a native system.

[ascrnet]

9 hours ago, E474 said:

Thanks very much, I will install the dev environment for the UnoCart, hopefully today, but more likely over or before the weekend.

No problem, I look forward to your feedback. 😉

I will continue to complete my collection of sample cartridge types.

 

9 hours ago, E474 said:

  Altirra runs fine under wine64 on Debian 11, but the help system doesn't work (I needed the keys for Start, Select and Option). What happens if you do Help -> Contents from the menu bar in Altirra? I got the help window table of contents, but the help pages themselves won't display (it displays "0036:err:mshtml:create_document_object Failed to init Gecko, returning CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE" in the console that I started wine in). I was using wine from the Debian repos, not from winehq, I might give winehq a go, but I only have 1 windows app that I want to use (Altirra), and now have the online help in HTML form, so it's good enough to use now. See this thread if your online help is broken: 

In the other thread you mention I'll comment something so as not to divert the main topic here. 😉

 

Regards

[+mytek]

576NUC+ A8Pico daughter board layout has evolved

 

I will be using the moniker RPSX which stands for...

• R = R-Time 8
• P = Pico Cart
• S = SDrive
• X = XRAM (1024K extended RAM)

This seems to incorporate the best of everything in my opinion, or at least what would be useful to me. The inclusion of the SDrive gives us great ATR support, and makes up for some of the deficiencies of the A8Pico in this regard. It also allows for the Pico to load something like Basic XE as a cart image, while still providing loading and saving of files via an ATR on the SDrive. With 1024K of SRAM the total = 1088K (XRAM 1024K + Base RAM 64K) which is the de-facto standard for the U1MB. Add in the R-Time 8 and this becomes a very well rounded machine.

 

SW1 is the Pico reset, and SW2 is the Pico enable/disable switch. The SDrive is disabled by removing the SD Card.

 

So now I'll wait for @electrotrains to release the design files for the A8Pico after he gets better

 

EDIT: I will move any more posts about this to an existing 576NUC+ thread from this point forward, since this is beginning to get a bit off topic in this one.

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

.

Edited August 10, 2023 by Piotr D. Kaczorowski

[+mytek]

If someone has an uncased A8Pico Cart can you take a high resolution pic of the back and the front of the board?

 

The ones posted in the beginning of this topic are too low of a resolution to make out much detail, and I'm trying to get a feel for what pin on the Pico side goes to what pin on the cartridge side.

 

Thanks

[+mytek]

I'm wondering if there is a way to run both SDX and an OSS CAR from the UNO or the A8 Pico Cart? So basically have the UNO work like there is a real SDX cart plugged in, with perhaps MAC65 plugged into that.

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

Is the connection scheme between Atari Cartridge port and purple RPI2040 public or rather private? @electrotrains will surely finish the project faster, but the board itself, which has passed positive startup tests, could be useful for other projects.

[+mytek]

On 8/16/2023 at 1:31 AM, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

Is the connection scheme between Atari Cartridge port and purple RPI2040 public or rather private? @electrotrains will surely finish the project faster, but the board itself, which has passed positive startup tests, could be useful for other projects.

I believe the intention is to release it as open source via GitHub same as was done for Robin's other Multi-Carts.

[Piotr D. Kaczorowski]

13 hours ago, mytek said:

I believe the intention is to release it as open source via GitHub same as was done for their other Multi-Carts.

 

Ok. We should wait.

[bfollowell]

On 8/17/2023 at 2:51 AM, Piotr D. Kaczorowski said:

 

Ok. We should wait.

 

Yeah, I'm anxious to build one of these too, just as a cool little project, but I don't think it's to that point yet.

 

[+mytek]

2 hours ago, bfollowell said:

Yeah, I'm anxious to build one of these too, just as a cool little project, but I don't think it's to that point yet.

Me too   Although I would certainly hold off on releasing my version until Robin has had time to sell some carts, and make back the R&D costs (+ some).

[E474]

Hi @ascrnet,

 

   I've built a new UnoCart firmware, but I can't flash it to my UnoCart. I have a generic/clone USB ST-Link stick, and it looks like the STMCubeIDE won't work with it. I'm not going to buy an official one, or get another clone stick, so not sure what to do next. Might give the support forums a go, but so far it's been a pretty poor experience. 

 

   I'll post more info if I can get it to work, but it's turning into a bit of a sink-hole. Got everything working a couple of years ago with an earlier version of STMCubeIDE, but this one isn't looking too promising.

[ascrnet]

19 hours ago, E474 said:

 I've built a new UnoCart firmware, but I can't flash it to my UnoCart. I have a generic/clone USB ST-Link stick, and it looks like the STMCubeIDE won't work with it. I'm not going to buy an official one, or get another clone stick, so not sure what to do next. Might give the support forums a go, but so far it's been a pretty poor experience. 

 

 I'll post more info if I can get it to work, but it's turning into a bit of a sink-hole. Got everything working a couple of years ago with an earlier version of STMCubeIDE, but this one isn't looking too promising.

the only thing I can think of since you are having problems, would be to post it in the UnoCart thread and see if someone else can do the firmware upgrade test.

 

Regards

[E474]

Hi @ascrnet,

 

   That's probably the last resort, but I'm looking at "stlink-tools" from the Debian repos, or https://github.com/EmBitz/EBlink - just being a bit cautious as I don't want to brick my UnoCart, but have managed to get this far, so don't want to bail too soon. 

[+mytek]

I got my 16MB Purple PICO clones from AliExpress 👍

 

[bfollowell]

7 hours ago, mytek said:

I got my 16MB Purple PICO clones from AliExpress 👍

 

 

I think I'm going to go ahead and order a few as well. I really don't know that I have any use for them other than to build this cart when everything becomes available, but for the price, I might as well pickup a few. I'm sure I can come up with some uses later. How long did yours take, if you don't mind me asking? I just bought some port saver cables for my STE off ebay from atarifreakz, the first time I've seen those available in a long time, and they came from the U.K. to Indiana in a week. I couldn't believe how quickly they arrived. Heck, I've ordered things from just a state or two away that took longer.

 

Anyway, I'm anxious to see what you do with yours. You always come up with the best projects.

 

[Fierodoug5]

9 hours ago, mytek said:

I got my 16MB Purple PICO clones from AliExpress 👍

I have mine from AliExpress ready to go as well!

[pirx]

same, it took like a week to ship to Miami 😮

[E474]

Hi All,

 

  I built an updated firmware (marked it as V2.0) for a UnoCart, but I only have a Chinese/eBay clone USB ST-Link device, and it won't work with the latest version of STM32CubeIDE (it looks like STM are trying to block users using clone ST-Link USB sticks).

 

  If anyone wants to try programming their own UnoCart with the attached firmware, and has an official ST-Link device, or a clone that works, you're welcome to try, but obviously it's at your own risk, etc. If you do want to give it a go, the new firmware will say Version 2.0 when the UnoCart starts up. The ZIP file has the changes supplied by @ascrnet added in, and the OS and ROM binaries converted to header files with xxd. It's also been changed to work with Linux path separators, and relative paths for include files, rather than absolute paths. Firmware is located in "UnoCart-master/source/STM32firmware/AtariCart/Debug". 

 

  I don't want to go any further as I can't be sure I can program the UnoCart correctly, or program it back to the current firmware, and I don't want to end up with a bricked UnoCart. I could get an official ST-Link device, but the cheapest I have seen them is about 90 euros on Amazon.es, and that doesn't make any $$ sense for me. Also, I'm quite happy to wait until the PicoCarts get released, you can build and upload to them via a USB-C cable, which I already have, and which does not cost 90 euros.

 

  Incidentally, I've already got in a supply of Chinese Purple Pico boards (I went for the slightly more expensive 264K (?) ones), they took about 12-14 days to ship from China to Portugal, and only a few days to get through Portuguese customs as the (EU) VAT (Sales Tax) was already paid by AliExpress.

 

  Hope this helps!

UnoCart-master-2.0.zip

[+mytek]

6 hours ago, bfollowell said:

How long did yours take, if you don't mind me asking?

Exactly 1 week from order to arrival. The seller guarantees a 2 week delivery maximum.

[ascrnet]

4 hours ago, E474 said:

  If anyone wants to try programming their own UnoCart with the attached firmware, and has an official ST-Link device, or a clone that works, you're welcome to try, but obviously it's at your own risk, etc. If you do want to give it a go, the new firmware will say Version 2.0 when the UnoCart starts up. The ZIP file has the changes supplied by @ascrnet added in, and the OS and ROM binaries converted to header files with xxd. It's also been changed to work with Linux path separators, and relative paths for include files, rather than absolute paths. Firmware is located in "UnoCart-master/source/STM32firmware/AtariCart/Debug".

Post it in the UnoCart thread to see if anyone wants to test it. 😉

 

I am looking at backing up the firmware I already have running to copy it to another pico clone and with this one to see if I can change the OS manually since I have no source codes. 😅