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New 576NUC+ Daughter Board in the Works

8/11/2023

 
Robin Edwards (electrotrains at AtariAge) has been at it again, and recently starting talking about an entirely new version of the 8-bit UNO Cart, only this time based upon a Chinese clone of the Raspberry Pi Pico. On this go around it has no removable media such as what the original UNO Cart utilized via its micro-SD Card, and instead it stores its files to an onboard 16MB of non-volatile Flash RAM, updated via USB.

Note: The Chinese Pico Clone is not a drop in for a real Pi Pico, having a different pin-out, as well as more I/O and more Flash RAM. The clone was required for this A8 version.

So I started thinking (always a dangerous thing), and decided to make something akin to an All-In-One daughter board module for the 576NUC+ project which would incorporate this new Pico Cart idea, along with several other very useful peripherals.

And here's a sneak peek as to what that may look like...
Picture
Currently I've assigned the moniker RPSX to it, which stands for the 4 main aspects contained within this module.

  • R = R-Time 8
  • P = Pico Cart
  • S = SDrive
  • X = XRAM (1024K extended RAM)

The Pico Cart does have ATR capability, but just like it's UNO Cart cousin this has some limitations, such as not being able to launch a CAR and an ATR at the same time. So it rules out doing something like launching Basic XE as a virtual banked cartridge and still being able to load and save Basic XE source files to and from the built-in file space. Hence the reason for also incorporating the SDrive.

BTW, the default 576NUC+ platform has absolutely no inherent banked cartridge support what-so-ever.

And while I was at it, I decided to give it the full 1MB of RAM, as well as a battery backed real time clock, making this a very well rounded upgrade for the 576NUC+.

Now on the surface it may look like I have this all figured out, but I presently don't have a clue as to what I/O pin goes to what on the Pico board until such time that the A8Pico Cart documentation gets released to the public, something that I have no idea of when that may happen.

Anyway stay tuned, and hopefully we'll see this project continue to come together.

- Michael

Note: The development on this project continued and got merged back into the 576NUC+ topic. Take this LINK to read more.

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    Author

    My name is Michael St. Pierre and in the early 90's I decided to create my very first Atari 8-Bit upgrade. It was called TransKey.
    ---Then soon after Atari folded and I left the scene ---
    25 years later I came back with a mission to improve upon what I had started so long ago.

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