Pi Pico PCMCIA / PC Card Introduction

Questionnaire: docs.google.com/forms/d/1r-Mz...
My website: www.yyzkevin.com
0:00 Introduction
0:42 Basic card explanation
5:43 Audio / Expansion Explanation
8:15 Quick networking demonstration
10:54 Audio demonstration
14:00 Rambling outro

[@guyelvy7317]

This is an amazing project, thank you for creating and sharing. Whilst I am unlikely to have a need, I will surely recommend it to others. And big props for the open-sourcing.

[@Nexxxeh]

Really impressive project. Crazy how much functionality you have integrated.

[@mikelycett3410]

As always Kevin you blow me away and great to see the interchangeability and modules that would be possible and great you worked with the other pico projects. Really great for the community. Looking forwards to getting hands on. I think I may have mentioned it before but using that USB as an accessible port would be something special especially on devices like the IBM PC110 I think the board options to date as a sound card, storage / emulation and network are just amazing. Great job. Mike

[@SeishukuS12]

That's pretty awesome, audio is definitely something retro laptops really need... Finding a working compatible PCMCIA sound device is reallly hard unless you want to spend big money.

[@ChEd1980]

This looks totally amazing! Very coold project and major props for open-sourcing it! I have got some PCMCIA equipped win CE devices and I think this could even be relevant for Commodore Amiga computers equipped with PCMCIA slots for networking and CDROM images and other cool stuff that could be implemented on the pico by the community!

[@-M-2-K-]

Incredible work. Thank you for investing so much time. Looking forward to seeing this in the wild.

[@DExUS5]

We need this! just make sure to include all drivers :)

[@DerekStruchel]

I'd love the sound features, but the network is also great! The CD image emulation also seems like a dream. Congrats!

[@rodrigovieiracouto]

Super! Can't wait to test it in my Toshiba Libretto!

[@danielktdoranie]

This is awesome! I would happily buy one!

[@jimbonobodycares10]

Looks amazing. Good work 😊

[@richardpowell8198]

Yes the Amiga A1200 and the A600 will benefit from this project 👍

[@yyzkevin416]

I mentioned below, but I will be offering a "short" version that is for the A1200, it will stick out just far enough to clear the Amiga case.

[@user-yg2mx3pr1i]

I’m so excited for this! Heads up, every single PC98 fan would KILL to have this emulate sound cards for that platform. There exist a few pcmcia sound cards for PC98 laptops, but they’re very rare. They’re super super sought after for PC98 laptop gaming. As most laptops lack any sound hardware

[@zik]

This is amazing. Can’t wait.

[@richardbanks2669]

This looks awesome - makes me wonder what functionality could be added to an Apple Newton. The possibility to perform many functions at once offers a lot of opportunity to make a really useful device. Thank you for all the effort you have put in to develop this!

[@RetroTechChris]

Oh yes! So exciting!

[@acomingextinction]

This is really, really clever. I've got an old Newton MessagePad I'd love to try this out with.

[@AiOBofh77]

This looks very interesting! Amiga user here.... A way to decode mp3:s using an MHI driver, and possibly AHI 16bit soundcard capabilities would be cool in combination with what you already have (i *guess* the Pico can handle those, if you can have an audio mixer or something to the jack-module). WiFi-stuff is offloading the host machine for WPA2/3? Looks awesome man!

[@PawePiotrowskiUK]

This is just an awesome project!!! Wow!!!

[@petrvrtilka1445]

Awesome!My A600 and A1200 are waiting! 😍

[@RetroErik]

Great project. I love early 486 laptops. They often lacks audio and network. So this card is perfect.

[@paulpsomiadis5847]

This is going to be really useful for the Amiga 600 and 1200 - would definitely be interested 😊

[@yyzkevin416]

I am going to offer a "short" version for the A1200, so it sticks out just enough for the Pico to be outside.

[@ChuckyGang]

@@yyzkevin416 this is me throwing money in some general direction. :)

[@jimbonobodycares10]

​@@yyzkevin416I'm definitely interested

[@crumplezone1]

Awesome work dude

[@fragglet]

Amazing work.

[@superangrybrit]

Wow. That is amazing!

[@guycrew728]

Is is awesome! The only feature I could think to add would be to treat the microsd card as one of those Hard drive PCMCIA cards for read/write capability instead of just reading for getting files off old laptops with no usb ports

[@nicolasvaillant2583]

Two great additions would be usb gameport adapter and jack to midi adapter, like on the picogus and the MPU 401 clone. I personnally really looking to this project

[@cromulence]

To quote Futurama - shut up and take my money! I think audio would be the biggest draw as this has always been the biggest limitation on older laptops. NE2000 is a nice touch, although PC Card Ethernet adapters are thankfully still somewhat available. Being able to run multiple devices is way cool though!

[@ianhanschen]

Awesome!

[@AndrewCurtis007]

Nice work!!

[@stevec00ps]

I love this!

[@Arsonist00]

PC Card soundblaster yes please!

[@techdistractions]

brilliant, absolutely love it when you say windows sound isnt supported - have you been able to test Windows 3.1? that tended to work with vanilla sound blaster drivers under something like sbemu for example. time for me to print some clip on laptop speakers :-)

[@yyzkevin416]

It does not work (sound) in any version of windows. The issue is, 16-bit PC Cards did not have DMA lines, and SoundBlaster requires DMA. So this requires me to do some software & hardware magic which windows does not like. In windows we do not need to emulate a SoundBlaster though so we will just provide a WSS interface. I know it is possible I have just not attempted as the bigger demand was for MS-DOS.

[@zik]

@@yyzkevin416 Regarding the 'software & hardware magic' did you reverse engineer the IBM 3D Sound PC Card? Or is this new black magic?

[@yyzkevin416]

@@zik Same approach as IBM 3D Sound, the DMA emulation.

[@bob_mosavo]

Awesome ‼

[@vkoskiv]

Would it make sense for the main PC card to have a plastic shell that leaves the pin sockets exposed flush with the surface? Then you could have swappable add-on modules that just snap onto there, no need to have a different case design for every configuration. Really cool project, I'm happy KZbin brought me here to see it getting developed :]

[@yyzkevin416]

I thought about something like this too. 3D design is one thing that falls well outside my capabilities, which is why I was waiting to confirm the "final design" as I have to pay an outside company to make the design for me.

[@vkoskiv]

This thing would be a perfect fit for my Toshiba Libretto 100CT. I was at Revision this last weekend, and I couldn't get the system networked because I forgot the adapter for my PCMCIA ethernet card, and my ORiNOCO card could only do 802.11b :D One more thought - Is it possible to enable the Pico to do the CPLD reprogramming on the card?

[@yyzkevin416]

Good question! The DIP switches on the bottom are for this, so that the Pico can be used to reprogram the CPLD without other tools. I went this route because GPIO pins on the Pico are in short supply and dedicating them to this purpose was going to limit other functions.

[@adameichler]

Did you think about creating a Panasonic SRAM memory card emulator? Those are getting very expensive and rely on back-up batteries. I thing a lot of old CNC, MIDI keyboards and Windows CE/Psion users would be grateful for that. As far as I know, no cheap commercial product is available and you seem to be the guy capable of creating such product :)

[@richards7909]

Perhaps at the end of the PCMCIA body you could put a cartridge style connector and then the end 'modules' could just be slid on? Very cool project nevertheless:-)

[@WistrelChianti]

OS2/Warp.... now that's a name I've not heard in a long time....

[@volodymyrvialyi5629]

would be a great add-on for Apple g4 cube, since it has no native audio-output

[@SuperNicktendo]

Awesome. I have been looking for a solution like this for my Dell laptop. It doesn't have the ability to do midi. If this works to add the midi compatibility for dos so I can use a Roland sc-55 I would buy this in a heartbeat

[@bubonzo]

It can be done if someone designs an additional board with a MIDI port.

[@SuperNicktendo]

@@bubonzo good to know. I'll be following the project. Wonder how difficult it could be for someone with no experience to learn to do it.

[@rubenaparicio7689]

Besides the Amiga 600/1200 already commented I see it could also be very interesting in Psion 5/7/Netbooks, I would buy a few.

[@TheKsax]

If you get CD drive emulation to work, this will be huge. It is so hard to run CD game images on authentic hardware. This can become ODE for vintage computers! Those things are huge for vintage consoles, infact, one of my plans was to repurpose ODE from a console for PC, because they both IDE based.

[@TheKsax]

It also worth for network and sound card alone, but throw in ODE, then it will be swiss army knife of vintage laptop computing.

[@sxcv8131]

Amazing project. I wonder how do you control laptop remotely? It looks like some VM interface, but you're interacting with a real hardware...

[@yyzkevin416]

I use an IPKVM. In this case it is an Advocent DSR1051, they can be found fairly cheap on eBay as they are antiquated now. They were used for controlling servers remotely and you can get PS/2 & VGA dongles for them.

[@sxcv8131]

@@yyzkevin416 thanks! I didn't think of that, because I'm usually accustomed to web ones. That native app interface certainly tops up usability.

[@NdxtremePro]

So, if you are going to emulate a CD, why not floppies as well? Or HDs?

[@yyzkevin416]

the need to emulate an HDD is not so critical, as it is easy to use CF cards. Emulating a floppy is possible, but there are few cards to emulate and most laptops will not boot from them so it also has less utility here.

[@NdxtremePro]

@@yyzkevin416 The utility is in easily copying over virtual hard disks from emulators you already have. You can use it to make backups of the current hard disk so that you have that, and you can move between emulator and other machines without having to setup everything again and again.

[@vineetaggarwal6704]

For type 1 I need for extended memory I only have 1 mb and 2 mb cards

[@abodahzakia76]

Can you maybe implement Bluetooth file transfer in Windows ? Maybe as serial or Irda-emulation so it will be less problematic with the drivers

[@yyzkevin416]

The reason I did not spend too much time on this type of storage is, often with these mobile devices it is easy enough to use CF cards to swap files in and out, or even USB. Various methods to do storage device and others with this card is totally possible, the Pico code just needs to be written.

[@james_neko]

Are you a wizard?

[@vineetaggarwal6704]

I need type 1

[@RetroBytesUK]

That looks fantastic, I'd be really interested once you're ready. If you have a list please add me to it.