CPC ROM emulator using a Raspberry Pi Pico

[RetroDave]

This looks like a great project.

I'd be very interested to hear how version 2 is progressing, especially the disk controller support. 

It would be great to have a cheap and simple to build floppy emulator. Existing CPC options seem limited and expensive. 

The memory expansion would be good too if that's possible. 

There are some similar projects for other platforms that are Pico based like the A2Pico card for the Apple II and PicoMEM for ISA PCs.

[nickxr]

Hi all I'm new to this site.
I found this project while searching the internet and decided to build it.
The rom side of things all appears to work great but the USB CH376 USB board I haven't managed to get working.
Just wondering if anyone has it working as I've been searching and I've not really found much on it apart from on the github page where it refers to the Albireo wiki.
I've tried different versions of the Albireo & Unidos rom I currently have I think the latest version from https://unidos.cpcscene.net which are Unidos 1.51 and Albireo 1.41
I've tried 4 different USB sticks ranging from a very old drive up to a newish USB 3 drive you can still buy new today.
When I put a USB stick in the drive the LED on the USB stick comes on for about 1 second and goes off.
The USB sticks are formatted to FAT32
The drive I wanted to use I only left 2 or 3 files in the root of the drive just in case of any issues with the number of files in a directory.
The 74LS688 chip I got  5 of them and I've tried, I think 3 of them.
I've tried a different PSU for the Amstrad.
I've tried moving roms around but my config currently looks like this:
L:OS_6128.ROM
0:BASIC_1.1.ROM              V1.20
4:Utopia                            V1.25
7:Unidos                            V1.51
10:Albireo                          V1.41
11:Picorom                        V3.11
To try and access the USB I've tried a few different commands of which I know some were not going to work as I was typing them but was just wishful thinking.
|drive  is the command that I thought would work and it doesn't show any USB drive.
Has anyone got any ideas as I could be doing something stupid and missed something very basic?


https://i.postimg.cc/YC3HbTYV/IMG-0856.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/SKvHP4sZ/IMG-0857.jpg

[eto]

Can you run SymbOS? 

If yes, check if you can access the drive from SymbOS. 

AFAIK Unidos needs some storage to save its configuration but this can't be the USB stick and has to be eg NVRAM or the sd card. Maybe this is related to the fact that it's not recognized. 

[nickxr]

Thank you for your reply, I did look at SymbOS but it requires 128k or RAM but I only have an unexpanded 464 so only 64k of RAM at the moment.
That said my next project may be making one of the 256k ram expansions but really depends how I get on with this as  I do want disk emulation and if It doesn't end up working, I will probably buy something like the Zaxon ddi device which some of them have ram included in them.
The Unidos not being able to install I will try one of the alternatives to Unidos.
 

[Marcone698]

Hi all, thanx to matronica for this project easy to make, fot me it's work fine but i have a stupid question, I noticed that the command to start a rom (|romname) does not correspond to the name of the file or the name of the rom, sometimes you need |dk to start donkey kong or |ping to start ping pong and so, in many cases it is necessary to try and try again to find the correct word to stard a rom, is there a way to know which word/name to write to start a rom or am I doing something wrong?

[GUNHED]

Hi all I'm new to this site.
I found this project while searching the internet and decided to build it.
The rom side of things all appears to work great but the USB CH376 USB board I haven't managed to get working.
Just wondering if anyone has it working as I've been searching and I've not really found much on it apart from on the github page where it refers to the Albireo wiki.
I've tried different versions of the Albireo & Unidos rom I currently have I think the latest version from https://unidos.cpcscene.net which are Unidos 1.51 and Albireo 1.41
I've tried 4 different USB sticks ranging from a very old drive up to a newish USB 3 drive you can still buy new today.
When I put a USB stick in the drive the LED on the USB stick comes on for about 1 second and goes off.
The USB sticks are formatted to FAT32
The drive I wanted to use I only left 2 or 3 files in the root of the drive just in case of any issues with the number of files in a directory.
The 74LS688 chip I got  5 of them and I've tried, I think 3 of them.
I've tried a different PSU for the Amstrad.
I've tried moving roms around but my config currently looks like this:
L:OS_6128.ROM
0:BASIC_1.1.ROM              V1.20
4:Utopia                            V1.25
7:Unidos                            V1.51
10:Albireo                          V1.41
11:Picorom                        V3.11
To try and access the USB I've tried a few different commands of which I know some were not going to work as I was typing them but was just wishful thinking.
|drive  is the command that I thought would work and it doesn't show any USB drive.
Has anyone got any ideas as I could be doing something stupid and missed something very basic?


https://i.postimg.cc/YC3HbTYV/IMG-0856.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/SKvHP4sZ/IMG-0857.jpg

Try this: Get rid of Utopia, it's incompatible to lots of other ROMs. 

[nickxr]

Hi all I'm new to this site.
I found this project while searching the internet and decided to build it.
The rom side of things all appears to work great but the USB CH376 USB board I haven't managed to get working.
Just wondering if anyone has it working as I've been searching and I've not really found much on it apart from on the github page where it refers to the Albireo wiki.
I've tried different versions of the Albireo & Unidos rom I currently have I think the latest version from https://unidos.cpcscene.net which are Unidos 1.51 and Albireo 1.41
I've tried 4 different USB sticks ranging from a very old drive up to a newish USB 3 drive you can still buy new today.
When I put a USB stick in the drive the LED on the USB stick comes on for about 1 second and goes off.
The USB sticks are formatted to FAT32
The drive I wanted to use I only left 2 or 3 files in the root of the drive just in case of any issues with the number of files in a directory.
The 74LS688 chip I got  5 of them and I've tried, I think 3 of them.
I've tried a different PSU for the Amstrad.
I've tried moving roms around but my config currently looks like this:
L:OS_6128.ROM
0:BASIC_1.1.ROM              V1.20
4:Utopia                            V1.25
7:Unidos                            V1.51
10:Albireo                          V1.41
11:Picorom                        V3.11
To try and access the USB I've tried a few different commands of which I know some were not going to work as I was typing them but was just wishful thinking.
|drive  is the command that I thought would work and it doesn't show any USB drive.
Has anyone got any ideas as I could be doing something stupid and missed something very basic?
https://i.postimg.cc/YC3HbTYV/IMG-0856.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/SKvHP4sZ/IMG-0857.jpg

Try this: Get rid of Utopia, it's incompatible to lots of other ROMs. 

Thank you for your reply, I have got it running over the weekend it turned out I had one pin that the solder was not great on after resoldering that pin it worked 😊

[eto]

after resoldering that pin it worked

Definitely a best practice ;-) 

Half of my "unexpected failures" disappeared after resoldering. I do now always resolder ;-)