Notices by Ian Scott (polpo@chaos.social)

@billgoats Photoshop 3.0 was such a revelation to me!

I am pleased to announce that #PicoIDE is the only IDE/ATAPI drive emulator that can play Bad Apple

I spent today modifying toys so they can be used by children with disabilities at Santa’s Little Hackers. What a cool group that puts on this event! A huge room with people sewing, disassembling, soldering, and testing adapted toys. https://www.santaslittlehackers.com

So cool to see #PicoIDE already being written about on blogs I'm a big fan of. I'm working as hard as possible to get it officially launched ASAP!
Adafruit: https://blog.adafruit.com/2025/11/11/picoide-turns-a-raspberry-pi-rp2350-into-a-hard-drive-and-cd-emulator/
Hackster: https://www.hackster.io/news/ian-scott-s-picoide-turns-a-raspberry-pi-rp2350-into-a-feature-packed-hard-drive-and-cd-emulator-c1ae0fb6c53e
RetroRGB: https://www.retrorgb.com/picoide-an-ode-and-hardisk-emulator-for-retro-pcs.html

Are you ready for #PicoIDE? It seems to be telling me it's ready. Coming soon: ATAPI optical disc emulation and IDE hard drive emulation. https://picoide.com

Yesterday we visited Green Mountain Falls, CO to visit the kinetic sculpture Off the Beaten Path by Patrick Shearn. I wasn’t ready for just how dynamic it was even in the slightest breeze. Reminds me of a murmuration of starlings. Incredible artwork. It’ll only be up through October 19th.

The time has finally come. My kid’s math teacher has asked that he get a TI 84 Plus calculator for pre-calculus. When I was in high school I got an HP 48 to signal I was in the nerd elite and too good for those pedestrian TI calculators. I’ve grown past that mindset but TI’s monopoly still bugs me!

Whoops, I just noticed an issue with MPU MIDI output in SB and USB modes. It's a simple fix so expect a bugfix release soon 😅

Maintaining my perfect record of needing a bugfix release immediately after a big feature release, PicoGUS firmware v3.0.1 fixes MPU-401 output in SB and USB modes. https://github.com/polpo/picogus/releases/tag/v3.0.1

#PicoGUS is now an ODE! I've just released firmware v3.0.0, which adds Panasonic CD-ROM drive emulation. Put some ISOs or BIN/CUE files on a USB stick, plug it into your PicoGUS, and you've got a virtual CD-ROM drive that works in DOS and Windows 9x and supports CD audio. [edit: fw v3.0.1 fixes MPU-401 output in modes w/ CDROM] https://github.com/polpo/picogus/releases/tag/v3.0.1

The video from my talk at VCF East 2025, "Making a Hardware Emulator for a Legendary PC Sound Card" is now on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTLAhIkmUl0

BTW most of the holdup for releasing this is getting Sound Blaster support right. I had to switch to using a FIFO for SB samples which actually is pretty tricky! That's because the original SB cards just blasted samples straight from DMA into the DAC as they came in off the bus with no buffer

I was traveling for a week and intended to work on CDROM support for #PicoGUS while on the road but forgot the charger for my Pocket386, whoops. Now I'm home. Back in the day I liked how the opening FMV in Return to Zork called back to the original text adventures while saying LOOK AT OUR CD POWER

This weekend I’m polishing up CDROM emulation on PicoGUS and verified that it works in Windows 98. Once I figure out a nice way to switch disc images and make a utility for it I will release a new firmware version.

#PicoGUS can now emulate both a CDROM drive and Sound Blaster in parallel, smoothly playing both CD audio and SB sound effects simultaneously. Still a lot of polish to do before a new firmware release but I'm excited!! This is MechWarrior 2 with bin/cue stored on a USB stick plugged into the PicoGUS

Last night I experimented with CDROM emulation on #PicoGUS using iso or bin/cue on a USB stick, using code from yyzkevin. I first thought RP2040’s USB would be too slow but after seeing the Pico ODE for 3DO that emulates the same MKE interface, I have newfound confidence that it will be fast enough.

I just migrated to chaos.social from @polpo@bitbang.social - seems like it mostly worked ok? So if you got a notification that I followed you, that's why!