robinhedwards/A8PicoCart

Support for the stock Pico?

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Curious to know if the stock RPi Pico (green PCB with MicroUSB) is expected to work with this board, albeit with reduced capabilities? I'm assuming not, as I have built one and there is no splash screen, just a solid colour when powering on.

I don't have any other cartridge to test with my Atari 800 XL, so just wanted to confirm. Thanks!

No - please don't try this, you'll be lucky not to break either the pico and/or your Atari 800XL, because the pinout of the two boards is quite different.

The stock/official RPi Pico doesn't break out enough of the RP2040 GPIO pins to fully connect the cartridge port, which is the main reason I chose the purple clone as a basis for this project.

Its possible to do a reduced version of the functionality with official green RPi pico (e.g. 8k cartridges), but you'd need to update both the firmware and the PCB design.

Thanks for the quick reply and detailed explanation Robin. Might it be worth adding a note in the README to this effect? I do not have an issue with the fact that is does not work, but the potential to damage an Atari is a concern. I would not want this to come across as any sort of criticism, I fully appreciate that you shared this project with the world for free, and my misinterpretation of it is not your issue.

Thanks - I have added a note to the README as suggested. Hope your Atari is ok! Drop me a line if not, and I can probably help, since I had to replace the MMU on my own 65XE when I broke it during some early cartridge experiments.

Thank you! It's still passing the self test but I'll keep you posted. I'm not an Atari expert, I've repaired countless Commodore 64s and own a stack of them including two I built from scratch, but I only have the one Atari 8-bit machine.