Catch Catch playing on a 16Mhz 286 Packard Bell Victory, fullscreen at 30FPS. With the Picomem V1 acting as the hard drive and sound card (and ethernet card, though it didn't want to auth this boot for some reason). On the custom firmware as patched a couple posts above.
Acorns wrote on 2026-10-31, 00:24:Catch Catch playing on a 16Mhz 286 Packard Bell Victory, fullscreen at 30FPS. With the Picomem V1 acting as the hard drive and sound card (and ethernet card, though it didn't want to auth this boot for some reason). On the custom firmware as patched a couple posts above.
Apologies for the spam of posts, I cannot edit the existing one. Wasn't happy with the CRT's flashing in the phone camera, so reshot on an LCD.
FreddyV wrote on 2026-10-23, 10:09:Hi, Thanks 😀 Are you ok if I check and integrate some of this in next firmware ? I started also a Web interface on my side.... T […]
Vivid Warthog wrote on 2026-10-11, 11:20:Hi! Just wanted to share that I've made some work on the PicoMEM (2.0) FW fork that focuses heavily on Sound Blaster compatibili […]
Hi!
Just wanted to share that I've made some work on the PicoMEM (2.0) FW fork that focuses heavily on Sound Blaster compatibility and audio quality, plus some QoL improvements (like full setup via config.txt, so no PMINIT call is needed or firmware update from SD and access to SD card with HTTP over WiFi - so no more need to unscrew the pc tower to update the card 😁)There are also some bugs fixed, but all mentioned in CHANGES.md file.
So if you are using PicoMEM2 for SB/FM audio, you can check it out:
Hi,
Thanks 😀
Are you ok if I check and integrate some of this in next firmware ?
I started also a Web interface on my side....
The public picomem source is not the latest one, so will be lot of work to manually include this.
I also have to ensure it does not use too many ram
Hello FreddyV!
Absolutely, go ahead, grab and integrate whatever you find useful 😁
I understand that some things might be conflicting, as I've based the changes on the older code. Seems we fixed some of the same bugs (IRQ7 for example), probably in a completely different way.
I finally got the PicoMem working properly on the loaner EuroPC. I removed the PREBOOT from the config, so I was able to access the PicoMem settings and change them.
The downside to all this is that I may have to try to find another EuroPC to install the PicoMem into. I believe, that since I no longer can get an image out of mine, it’s only good for spare parts.
A couple of images of the PicoMem 2 (and 1) working on a loaner EuroPC. I’m excited to finally see it working. The only downside is that my own EuroPC seems to have deteriorated to good-for-spares condition. With time and patience, I might get it working again, but at the moment, I really don’t have the time and energy to do that.
Well, talk about a Hail Mary working out… The above are from my EuroPC with Indy 500 running from the PicoMem2.
So, I did some more probing on the mainboard, and found out that one address line from the expansion slot wasn’t making contact to one logic chip. I figured I had nothing to lose if I simply soldered a long bodge wire across the board to connect the two points, as the system wasn’t even posting. After adding the bodge, it still wasn’t posting but tried and true knocking against the tabletop sorted out that at least temporarily, and lo and behold, PicoMem was identified and the system was booting into the hard disk image I had on the SD card. You cant imagine how good it felt to hear the Planet X3 intro out of the PicoMem’s audio.
This has been a long journey, and it still isn’t quite over as I still have the issue of the system not posting without a good knock, so I need to get that sorted out still, but I accept my victories as they come.
Some more progress. I tried the probably the most obvious treatment to the non booting issue and pressed all the socketed chips, which seemed to fix it. Now the EuroPC seems to boot consistently.
I suppose I can now concentrate on configuring the PicoMem…
RetroBard wrote on 2026-11-01, 20:09:Some more progress. I tried the probably the most obvious treatment to the non booting issue and pressed all the socketed chips, which seemed to fix it. Now the EuroPC seems to boot consistently.
I suppose I can now concentrate on configuring the PicoMem…
Glad you got it working
