Raspberry PI PICO ATARI ST Hard Drive Emulator (WIP)

[alexh]

520 ST - Just worked. No mandatory fixes. Original Pico Firmware version. It doesn't work from cold boot (of the ST) for me. Needs a warm reset but no big deal. Possibly would be fixed by later FW? Might be a TOS 1.0 thing?

IMG_20230915_232948.jpg

IMG_20230915_232945.jpg

[exxos]

You need to update the firmware it contains many fixes.

TOS1.00 is supposed to be buggy as hell with drives. I'm surprised it worked at all. You really need TOS104 .

[exxos]

A quick reminder that these are now in stock :)

https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/#0259

[alexh]

I can testify they are good. Mine worked out of the box with TOS1.0 and the original FW. I'll be demo'ing mine at Cyberlegends 2.0 if anyone wants to have a look-see.

[Methanoid]

Good to see more options (I have an STM32 one already) but this may be a dumb Q but why not have the RP2040 chip on the main PCB and skip the Pico board at all? Or does the Pico board add things or contains things you can't do without it? Just seems bigger than it MIGHT need to be?? :oops:

[stephen_usher]

The chip is a BGA package I believe, which is difficult to solder if you don't have the correct production equipment.

The RPi Pico adds the power control circuitry mostly.

For a small production run like this I doubt that it would be economic to build the PCB with the RP2040 installed upon it. The RPi Pico has the advantage of being through-hole and cheap due to the economies of scale to produce.

[sporniket]

The chip is a BGA package I believe, which is difficult to solder if you don't have the correct production equipment.

I believe the RP2040 is a QFN package with exposed pad underneath, not BGA, but still PITA to assemble.

[chronicthehedgehog]

Just thought I'd share some results.

Seeing smonson's new HDD prompted me to check for new firmware, so I installed v1.2. However there has been a small decrease in performance compared to v1.13.

I'm only mentioning it as the release notes for 1.2 mention performance.

Using the ICD RATEHD tool..

For v1.13 f/w I get 980K/s and 975K/s on the first and second drives respectively
For v1.20 f/w I get 956K/s and 952K/s on the first and second drives respectively

Not a problem for me personally as v1.13 has been 100% stable and I'll stick with that.

EDIT:
FWIW, both SD cards are SANdisk

[exxos]

Seeing smonson's new HDD prompted me to check for new firmware, so I installed v1.2. However there has been a small decrease in performance compared to v1.13.

Yep, was mentioned a few posts back.

viewtopic.php?p=103916#p103916

[chronicthehedgehog]

Yep, was mentioned a few posts back.

Aha. cheers

EDIT

I need to use a better tool. Combined R/W is lot more realistic