trumpetlicks wrote on 2026-02-26, 01:59:

Oh, when I was shown the solder bridge, I fixed it in the next 5 minutes. Sometimes I struggle because I have the iron, the hot air, etc... but I don't have good magnification yet. Im just getting back into soldering, etc...

When in doubt, take it outside and take high-resolution, in-focus photos of the joints in question, with the best light (but not glare) possible.

Even without "proper" magnification, you can usually use this technique to identify solder bridges at this scale/complexity.

Can ZuluIDE act as a DVD-drive replacement in a Windows 98 build?
If so, can it handle dual layer 8.5GB images?

Can ZuluIDE act as a DVD-drive replacement in a Windows 98 build?
If so, can it handle dual layer 8.5GB images?

It absolutely can, so long as the disc images remain in one of the formats that the ZuluIDE can read (ISO or BIN/CUE). It doesn't identify as a specific type of drive to the system other than an "optical drive" — so in Windows 98, it shouldn't have any problem reading disc images that large.

mbalmer wrote on 2026-04-16, 00:32:

Can ZuluIDE act as a DVD-drive replacement in a Windows 98 build?
If so, can it handle dual layer 8.5GB images?

It absolutely can, so long as the disc images remain in one of the formats that the ZuluIDE can read (ISO or BIN/CUE). It doesn't identify as a specific type of drive to the system other than an "optical drive" — so in Windows 98, it shouldn't have any problem reading disc images that large.

That's good news!
Thank you for the information.

Another question I have: Can this read from .iso files made from DVD discs, like UT2004 DVD, Windows 7, etc?

(Yes, I'm already aware it might have problems with DRM protections. That's outside the scope of the question.)

Edit: This question was already answered.

I Got one Zulu Control Board 5.25 but never got it to work. Do I need more then just one wire. On my ZuluIDE?

zorprime wrote on 2026-08-18, 07:22:

I Got one Zulu Control Board 5.25 but never got it to work. Do I need more then just one wire. On my ZuluIDE?

My educated guess for why you never got it to work is that you are running downrev firmware. Please contact us via e-mail, and we'd be happy to help you sort this out, one way or another.

aperezbios wrote on 2026-08-19, 00:01:

zorprime wrote on 2026-08-18, 07:22:

I Got one Zulu Control Board 5.25 but never got it to work. Do I need more then just one wire. On my ZuluIDE?

My educated guess for why you never got it to work is that you are running downrev firmware. Please contact us via e-mail, and we'd be happy to help you sort this out, one way or another.

I have zuluide RP2040, audio dac kit and zulu control board. When I power the pc looks like the control board get no power at all. ? Is a simple firmware update will solve this use?

zorprime wrote on 2026-08-21, 04:21:

aperezbios wrote on 2026-08-19, 00:01:

zorprime wrote on 2026-08-18, 07:22:

I Got one Zulu Control Board 5.25 but never got it to work. Do I need more then just one wire. On my ZuluIDE?

My educated guess for why you never got it to work is that you are running downrev firmware. Please contact us via e-mail, and we'd be happy to help you sort this out, one way or another.

I have zuluide RP2040, audio dac kit and zulu control board. When I power the pc looks like the control board get no power at all. ? Is a simple firmware update will solve this use?

Without knowing which version of the firmware is currently on your ZuluIDE RP2040, it's not possible to answer this question accurately. You can always download the latest ZuluIDE firmware release from https://github.com/ZuluIDE/ZuluIDE-firmware/releases/latest

As requested, please contact us via e-mail and we will assist you in troubleshooting and resolving this issue. This thread is not intended for product support with individual customers.

Sorry about that but. I try email But no luck.
To get that little screen to show what I selected on the zuluide sim to be imposible. I was going to order another but sold out. This forum was my last hope. I was wating to see if anyone has that problem.

zorprime wrote on 2026-08-23, 03:47:

Sorry about that but. I try email But no luck.
To get that little screen to show what I selected on the zuluide sim to be imposible. I was going to order another but sold out. This forum was my last hope. I was wating to see if anyone has that problem.

I'll send you a DM.

DivByZero wrote on 2026-02-01, 19:13:

On the topic of controlling image switching with a DOS program, I treated myself to a ZuluIDE v2 for my birthday, and it arrived last week. Haven't had a chance to even plug it in yet, but I bought it specifically to develop this feature, as it's of little use to me without it. Can't guarantee timeframes, but I'm hoping to be able to have a crack at it in the near future. If I pull it off, a firmware revision and the program itself will be made available on GitHub, which I hope to contribute back to the main project. If you're interested, watch this space, as I'm sure to want others to help with testing it.

Bumping my own post here to say finally got a chance to play around with the ZuluIDE yesterday. After bashing a way a little bit, I managed to get a DOS image switching program working. I currently have a custom firmware loaded on my ZuluIDE, and a simple DOS program I called ZULUSWAP.EXE, which takes a drive or port number, and the name of a CD image on the SD card, and sends a custom ATAPI command to the ZuluIDE device to trigger a swap of a CD image. The current implementation is NOT clean, I actually used codex AI tools to generate most of the DOS program so I could push to a proof-of-concept quickly and flush out any technical issues, but in the end it was fairly straightforward. My time is limited, so it'll take me a little bit to get this cleaned up and ready for submission, but I'll prepare something to share here soon. Note that I've only tested this for V2 devices, which is the only one I have to test on, but it should also work for the original V1 devices. With this program, you can simply have launch scripts for games that swap in the CD image for the game before booting. It's great solution for a 486 running DOS, giving you an effectively unlimited game library with no swapping discs.

well, i like the idea but there’s a few of these type of devices floating around but they all don't do copy protection emulations if they did then they'd be very popular.

A little update. While the image swapping is working perfectly, I've had a lot of trouble with the ZuluIDE device itself. It seems there are numerous things fundamentally wrong with the encrypted, closed-source firmware that actually does the heavy lifting of driving the bus. Since this image is, as I said, closed source and encrypted, I can't even analyze it further to determine where the errors lie, but simply put, the ZuluIDE in my tests is fundamentally broken when it comes to bus sharing with another real device on the same IDE channel. When I connect two physical, period CD drives via a master/slave arrangement on my ES1869-based soundcard, I get both appearing and working without issue. With the ZuluIDE, I can't connect any other devices. On debugging, I see the ZuluIDE incorrectly actively asserting lines in response to communication intended for the other drive, and not responding to things intended for it. It's just simply broken. I can see what appear to be real issues in the open portions of the firmware, but even after patching those, there are fundamental issues in the other half that cause it to break with shared bus communication, which I can't fix. From the git commit history and code comments, it's clear this has been known to be problematic, and there are unresolved issues there.

As it stands, that makes this drive incompatible with my use case, which is as a secondary optical drive on a physical 486. I hope this gets addressed, because it's a bit disappointing, and definitely limits the usability of this device.

If that's the case this is a dealbreaker for me as well.

DivByZero wrote on 2026-08-25, 09:36:

A little update. While the image swapping is working perfectly, I've had a lot of trouble with the ZuluIDE device itself. It seems there are numerous things fundamentally wrong with the encrypted, closed-source firmware that actually does the heavy lifting of driving the bus. Since this image is, as I said, closed source and encrypted, I can't even analyze it further to determine where the errors lie, but simply put, the ZuluIDE in my tests is fundamentally broken when it comes to bus sharing with another real device on the same IDE channel. When I connect two physical, period CD drives via a master/slave arrangement on my ES1869-based soundcard, I get both appearing and working without issue. With the ZuluIDE, I can't connect any other devices. On debugging, I see the ZuluIDE incorrectly actively asserting lines in response to communication intended for the other drive, and not responding to things intended for it. It's just simply broken. I can see what appear to be real issues in the open portions of the firmware, but even after patching those, there are fundamental issues in the other half that cause it to break with shared bus communication, which I can't fix. From the git commit history and code comments, it's clear this has been known to be problematic, and there are unresolved issues there.

As it stands, that makes this drive incompatible with my use case, which is as a secondary optical drive on a physical 486. I hope this gets addressed, because it's a bit disappointing, and definitely limits the usability of this device.

Hi there, I sent you a DM asking you to engage with us and provide feedback, and would like to understand and get to the bottom of the issues you are experiencing, but that requires you to choose to engage with us, which does not appear to have happened at this moment in time. As I stated in my DM to you, it would appear that have made zero effort to state what you believe those things actually are, robbing us of the ability to "fix' them

Will you please share this information with us? You can do so via either GitHub, or via e-mail at support@zuluide.com. If you do so, I am reasonably confident that we can resolve this to your satisfaction. You must also realize that the dual-device mode is new functionality, and we're well aware that it may not behave 100% properly in every context. All ZuluIDE V2's have a built-in bus sniffing mechanism that allows for bus device-level bus traces to be captured for offline analysis. If you send us one of these traces, we can and will work with you to resolve the issue, but at this point, you're choosing to remain anonymous and spread FUD, instead of giving us a fair chance to rectify the issues you're facing.

Please contact and engage with us.

I can see this came across as an attack - it was not intended as such. This IS me engaging. This thread is where I first learned about this product, I've posted in here before, other people have posted support questions here, and it's where I returned to report my honest experiences trying to use it. I'm more than happy to work with you to help solve this, and that's in my best interests too. I prefer to engage with things like this publicly and transparently, and it can be great PR for you and your company to be seen publicly to be responsive and engaged in fixing problems as they occur.

As for frustration, the issue itself is only mildly frustrating, in fact I love troubleshooting issues like this and take it as a challenge. To be honest, I was more frustrated by the closed-source component in the firmware. ZuluIDE was clearly marketed as having open-source firmware, which I've found is only partially true. I would have been able to fix this myself and contribute back if it was fully open-source, and finding that wasn't possible surprised me, as it was part of my thinking when buying the ZuluIDE that "if I have problems with it, I can fix them", but then I hit this wall. I understand the issue of clones, and the worry about doing all the R&D only to be undercut by cheap copies on AliExpress. I get it. If you picked up frustration in my post though, it was more around this discovery than the issue itself. I bought this product with the intention to extend its functionality, as I mentioned before around the DOS program to switch disc images. Finding that the core part that drives the actual bus communication is walled off was unexpected.

Now you've sent me a DM. I'd prefer to engage more openly here in this thread or via GitHub. Since I've talked about this issue publicly, I think it'd be in your interest to have the support and resolution be public too. I'm on the train right now heading into work, and I won't have a chance to tinker with this more tonight, but tomorrow evening I'll open an issue on GitHub, and send through some sniffer logs and further info. I'm also happy to roll back to a prior firmware version if you can point to a particular older revision you suspect might be more likely to be problem free, such as one prior to the dual-device mode being introduced. If you can let me know a revision to try, I can probably squeeze that in quickly this evening, which might help rule a bunch of things out from the get-go.

@divbyzero via GitHub is fine. I have only the information you have provided here, which contain almost no details about what you've discovered or otherwise fixed, just very broad generalizations which are very negative, and give us no opportunity to respond constructively.

GitHub is an appropriate place for these conversations to happen. This thread is not. Please use GitHub to report your discoveries, issues, etc. If you're not ready to open up issues, you are always welcome to initiate a general-purpose discussion at https://github.com/ZuluIDE/ZuluIDE-firmware/discussions

To tie off the discussion in this thread, the issue has been logged here, with detailed hardware information and logs:
https://github.com/ZuluIDE/ZuluIDE-firmware/issues/386
I'm happy to continue to work on information gathering and troubleshooting from that ticket.

DivByZero wrote on 2026-08-28, 01:52:

To tie off the discussion in this thread, the issue has been logged here, with detailed hardware information and logs:
https://github.com/ZuluIDE/ZuluIDE-firmware/issues/386
I'm happy to continue to work on information gathering and troubleshooting from that ticket.

Much appreciated. We will analyze the captures and follow up with you in the GitHub issue reference above.