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Extra pic showing close up of bread board:

Have just managed to boot up a bread boarded PicoCart! I used 10 cm wires, but used a Cartridge breakout board with the header pins on the back of the PCB, so the bread board could sit comfortably on the top of the 800XL. Now to start hacking around with the firmware, etc.

Hi @Piotr D. Kaczorowski, Thanks for the info, I just checked in the Antic series on the PBI bus (Antic Vol. 3, No.11, March 1985) and the advice was that you should use HCT rather than HC, but I guess this was before F series chips were available. This is really where I would be asking for advice, assuming I could come up with a circuit in the first place. I've also got the wire and crimps/crimping tool for making DuPont wires, but I find it a bit slow and fiddly, and the lengths would be at most 15 cm, with some being a bit shorter due to having to redo some of the crimps. Hopefully I'll improve with practice, but if I had to make 120 wires, that would be no small undertaking.

-- Sorry to hear about the arm by the way, just a bit caught up with my own situation! Have ditched the cling film and am just using a big plaster, but curious to see how it goes over the next few days.

Hi @Piotr D. Kaczorowski, @electrotrains, @mytek! I have 10 cm and 20 cm cables from AliExpress (see items listed by vendor: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/912189981 ). I think I will switch over to 20 cm cables as the 10 cm ones are a bit short, and probably will come loose quite easily, as @electrotrains says. I also have some 50 cm cables from eBay seller "berrybase" in Germany, that might be slightly higher quality, but it's difficult to tell just by looking, but will only give those a try as a last resort. I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible as I don't have a lot of hardware experience, so would have to read up on the details before going the 74F08 route, but I appreciate the pointer! For the nag screen, I think you can monitor USB events in software on the Pico, but I'm not sure what you would actually be able to do about it, apart from maybe flashing the Pico's LED. It's just that putting it in the loader is a step up from the Manual, which a lot of people only consult as a last resort. Having a protection circuit sounds ideal, I've just started working with KiCad myself (I've watched the 10 part Youtube series by Shawn Hymel at: But haven't done anything creative with KiCad yet. Well, hopefully should have everything up and running by tomorrow, I'll post any progress I make just in case anyone wants to try this route too.

Quick question: I'm bread-boarding this project at the moment, and using @Dropcheck's cartridge breakout board on an 800XL, and 10 cm (4 inch) wires to connect to the breadboard. It's a bit cramped, is it OK to use 20 cm (8 inch) wires, or will I run into issues? Obviously I can just try it out, but is there a wire length after which I will run into timing problems (newbie question)?

True, but maybe control the behavior with a check for "NAG.TXT", and if it's missing don't nag.

It was even more annoying than that, I'd done all the soldering, but was giving the tip a good cleaning (I had watched a few Youtube videos on the subject, as it was not something I had been good at, and it was obvious it needed doing). I was concentrating on cleaning the tip, and somehow managed to get the shaft of the iron (that bit's hot too) on a finger tip.

Also, a quick refresher on first aid for burns would be wise, I'm walking round with a finger wrapped in cling film at the moment.

Is the "Do not plug in USB cable while cart is in 8-bit" worth adding to the PicoCart ROM as a nag screen?

Hi, The drawback to this is that you can't use an OTG cable and a USB stick for PicoCart storage. For example, see: https://github.com/rppicomidi/pico-usb-host-msc-demo It might be simplest to just plug an OTG cable into the USB socket to act as a block to accidental connection to a PC, or tape over the socket.

I just meant leave the cameras rolling to collect the video, and edit out the boring bits/dead ends of the investigation (though they might be useful viewing as showing how to rule out something is also quite useful). Obviously you could do a live-stream, but then you'd probably get "'Your tea's ready" type interruptions.

I've gotten into the habit of videoing the "unboxing/unpacking" of anything I order online, because it only really requires me to use the camera on my phone, and although it's a bit fiddly to open packages with one hand, it has actually come in handy when a mistake has been made. One vendor shipped precisely half of what had been ordered, and I sent photos of the situation, but also mentioned I'd videoed the unboxing, and the rest of the order was in the post the next day. Is it practical to just video a complete repair, and then edit out the bits that don't add much to the process, a la "25 minutes later intermission photos" in the videos? A week or so ago a video popped up in my Youtube feed on repairing a PC Graphics card, which I've linked to below as it's kind of interesting to see what repairs are involved in a modern system. Apparently shipping a pre-built PC with a massive cooling fan on a graphics card can cause damage to the card's PCB if there's any shocks during transit, but the fix is obviously a bit more involved than just 60/40 solder and an iron. Incidentally, am also enjoying the @flashjazzcat Youtube channel, though non of the "viewers of this channel also watch videos" are anything to do with me, apart from the Austin Powers Radar Jokes clip, which is a timeless classic.

Hi @electrotrains, Glad you're back on your feet! I had a quick look at the Manual, and also glad to see the address and data lines are sequential, so that makes PIO hacking easier (anyone interested in the Cartridge connection to GPIO pin mappings should look in https://github.com/robinhedwards/A8PicoCart/blob/main/A8PicoCart Manual.pdf - page 4) One quick question, the thread you link to on Purple Pico clones (https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=337976) contains links to two different boards, one a 128 KB and the other a 264 KB board, I'm assuming you used the 264KB board, can you confirm that's the case, e.g. is it uncertain if the 128KB board would actually work/or has it actually been used and tested? Maybe this is worth updating the repository docs, just to steer buyers to the appropriate model? Looking forward to hacking round with this!

I recently bought a 1050, seller advertised it as powering up. Got round to testing it today, powered it up, and got the motor-spin, spin-down, motor-spin, spin-down, POST fail. Can't complain as the seller obviously was selling a fair bit of retro kit, and probably had no idea what was legit.

Ah, that would be me. I've informally asked a couple of AA members if they can test the built firmware, but I might also try ask someone local if they wouldn't mind me installing the Windows 10 version of Atollic Studio, as it should be a quick test.

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

Startup Eclipse, then: Help -> About Eclipse IDE -> "Installation Details"

If the 800XL booted previously, it's much more likely to be a problem with your SDrives. Have you formatted with FAT32, and how large is the SD-card? Can you upload photos showing the boards (PCBs)?

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.

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.

Hi @ascrnet, Thanks very much for checking the Help functionality. I think in retrospect I would have been better off installing from winehq than the standard Debian repos. Hopefully this is helpful for anyone wanting to use Altirra under wine on Linux. I'll stick with my current config for the moment as I'm planning to upgrade to Debian 12 soonish anyway. Having the online help in HTML is actually really nice as I can browse the docs from my phone/ancient iPad (recommended).

Hi @Dropcheck, Just wanted to post a big THANK YOU for designing the Cartridge Breakout PCB (at https://www.bitsofthepast.com/cartridgeboards.html# ). My boards arrived a day or so ago and I have soldered on the header pins and it looks like "All Systems Go", next step is hooking an MCU/Pico up and hacking around. Also found another of your boards being used in this Youtube video, which I thought was quite cool:

Hi @mirao, Thanks for the info, I installed xchm and it works fine with Altirra help, much better than "Calibre" (see earlier post). I originally Googled the error: "Could not find Wine Gecko. HTML rendering will be disabled. 0036:err:mshtml:create_document_object Failed to init Gecko, returning CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE" And got to the fix of: $ winetricks ie8 But that didn't fix the problem, and there was a note later on in the page I originally found saying it was broken (of course I can't (re-)find the page that I found that info on). That was when I thought it would be quicker to ask what Start, Select and Option were mapped to in Altirra (and indeed that was much easier than getting Gecko installed, which I still haven't done, though I don't actually need to now, so I have no idea how long that would actually take (without asking for help, of course)). All this was on day 1 of using wine, and I was already past the rabbit hole, and deep in the warren. There's a limit to how many, "well that didn't work" web pages you can visit before you start considering alternative approaches (I guess). This only came up because I was testing to see if Arcadia.atr would corrupt the display if it was loaded by a Translator disk, and when I booted the Translator disk it said "Press Select to reboot", and I couldn't find the mapping for Select because (I discovered) the online help was broken. I have tried to post the answers for things that did (or didn't work), in case that helps others, and appreciate the tip on using xchm (which does actually work), and to be fair, it's quite easy to get a working Altirra under wine as you can just install from the Debian 11 repositories with apt-get.

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.