Raspberry PI PICO ATARI ST Hard Drive Emulator (WIP)

[exxos]

@exxos Any idea if/when you might have more of these available in your store?

There's a lot of issues to solve yet. Could be with the drive or STE or both.. I need to solve another STE DMA issue first.. but I don't really have time/ motivation to go down that rabbit hole again. It also doubles up as a issue with my STE booster as well. I think my clock-sync board will solve some problems..

But AFAIK, people are having issues with even stock machines ? @dad664npc did some tweaks which seemed to have solved some problems. but not sure the status of it all currently. Plus I'm busy with the DFB1 stuff at the moment.

[Badwolf]

Dad664npc's latest code* solved the write problem for me on my (stockish) STE, so I'm sure his latest firmware would help.

BW




* That code's secret squirrel stuff, though, so I can't just apply it to the open source version, but it does tell me firmware can help & give me a target

[BigSteve]

Newbie question...

Is the only way to power this through the microUSB of the Pico? Pin 39 (VSYS) seems not to be connected anywhere on the motherboard.

If this is the case (and I will assume designed to ensure power stays on separate to Atari power) then what is the 2 pin header marked 5V for? Is it needed?

Edit - follow on question... I get 4 bombs everytime loading HDDRIVER (v12).

[DaveC]

Edit - follow on question... I get 4 bombs everytime loading HDDRIVER (v12).

If you haven't already just updating the firmware should fix things: viewtopic.php?p=102111#p102111

[chronicthehedgehog]

It's working faultlessly on my STe with the latest firmware and ICD pro drivers. It doesn't like the hddrivers though yet.

[dad664npc]

Apologies for lack of documentation - the draft is a WIP. The HDC is powered via USB connector. The pin-header adjacent to the IDC connector is marked "exxos adaptor 5v". The idea was to put 5v on pin 20 of the IDC connector - then the exxos adaptor will have 5v for pull-up resistors. These pull-ups would only be beneficial on an ST(fm) not the STE.

Please download the latest firmware from - bbansolutions.co.uk link in signature below

[BigSteve]

If you haven't already just updating the firmware should fix things: viewtopic.php?p=102111#p102111

Thanks Dave - Yep - applied the UF2 update already. This is an H5 machine - I am going to dig out a real STFM and compare.

[chronicthehedgehog]

Just posting this here as it might be useful to fellow PICO drive users.

Could be common knowledge for all I know. Apologies if I'm trying to teach you to suck eggs :D

The consensus seemed to be that ICD Pro didn't like DOS partitions but I thought I'd give it a go since I read in several places that it should be able to handle FAT16.

FAT partitions created under Windows didn't work at all, but those created with Linux/fdisk did. Here's my transcript:

Code: Select all

# assuming this is a fresh sd card, the first partition will become /dev/sda1
# change device as necessary
# n.b. fdisk is interactive. fdisk prompts replaced by comments
sudo fdisk /dev/sda
# new partition
n
# primary
p
# number
1
# first sector
2048
# last sector
+32M
# change type from linux to fat
t
# hex code
4
# save
w

# format the partition
sudo mkfs.fat -D 0x80 -F 16 -M 0xF8 -S 1024 -n DOS1 /dev/sda1

Now assuming you haven't allocated all your drive letters to disk 0, ICD will recognise the DOS partition at boot time on the second disk/card.

I should add that reads/writes to/from TOS drives seem fine but TOS throws some weird errors if you try and delete from the FAT16 partition. I assume ICD handling of FAT is a little lacking. Fine for transferring data but I wouldn't keep anything precious on it.

[exxos]

Is there any interest still in another small run of the pico drives ?

[JezC]

Is there any interest still in another small run of the pico drives ?

Yes...and not just to help by testing in an STE with your 32MHz plug-in accelerator!
:D

Probably 1 or 2 for me (funds being the limit ATM)