Morpheus wrote: ↑Tue Oct 05, 2021 6:26 pm
I wonder, have you looked at the Raspberry Pi Pico instead of the Nano?
I still have two Picos that have been loitering about my desk since I ordered them last year, that need to be put to some use. At one point during OqtaDrive development I considered switching to the Pico. I thought I had hit a performance problem that the Nano would not be able to overcome. But it turned out that after all everything was doable with the Nano.
In general it's possible to put the adapter code onto a different micro-controller. It would require a bit of tweaking though. Timing and the use of interrupts is crucial. Any reason for prefering a Pico over a Nano?
I just remember you saying that possibly the Nano was running out of headroom earlier and now I have read up on the Pico's specs and how it has more memory and more CPU power, I was pondering the idea of trying to put a Pico in my Oqtadrive as a challenge to myself.
I briefly dabbled with Arduino's and the IDE software but never really pursued it. So now I am retired I was thinking about having a go at MicroPython on the Pico to keep the grey cells ticking over. You know the old saying "Use it or Loose it"
The device works great as it is and this was just something I was mulling over out loud, I wasn't trying to say you should change anything.
BTW, I'll be showing OqtaDrive at VCFB this weekend, in a virtual exhibition. So if you want to see OqtaDrive in action or ask questions, just visit the video chat. I'll put up the link to that Saturday morning on the wiki page.
My Oqtadrive is inside a spare Microdrive case now with a new fascia plate and the little motor gives that little extra bit of feedback when the drive is being accessed.
xelalex wrote: ↑Sun Oct 10, 2021 10:07 am
That's great! Initially, I didn't think I'd want a standalone configuration, but by now it's my favorite setup.
it would essentially work, but without a network connection it would probably not be very useful. You wouldn't be able to use the web UI, and als can't ssh into the Pi. So you need to get your Pi connected somehow. I think there are Micro USB RJ45 LAN adapters, possibly also for Wifi. They shouldn't be very expensive, so I'd try that route.
BTW, if you missed VCFB earlier this month, the video streams are now available. The OqtaDrive presentation I gave is included here, starting at about 13:20 (it's in English).
Do you think that the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W would work in the Oqtadrive? Given it’s a Quad core 64 Bit cpu it may run too fast. I have seen videos of it booting Raspbian a lot faster that the original Pi Zero.
That should work without any problems. The timing critical stuff is all on the Nano. The Zero 2 would greatly improve boot up time, as you already pointed out, and also speed up on the fly conversion of z80 snapshots. I think [mention]TomD[/mention] is going to try a Pi Zero 2 W, so we might be hearing from him soon.
My Pi Zero 2 W is due to arrive today but I won’t be able to test it as I glued my Microdrive case closed as I had no plans to replace my Pi Zero at the time.
I’ll need to speak to Tom about another 1.2B board and build another LOL
xelalex wrote: ↑Sun Oct 10, 2021 10:07 am
That's great! Initially, I didn't think I'd want a standalone configuration, but by now it's my favorite setup.
xelalex wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 9:18 am
That should work without any problems. The timing critical stuff is all on the Nano. The Zero 2 would greatly improve boot up time, as you already pointed out, and also speed up on the fly conversion of z80 snapshots. I think @TomD is going to try a Pi Zero 2 W, so we might be hearing from him soon.
Initial results, not extensive. Everything works fine, exactly as for the original Zero including the set-up scripts. Boot time is about 20% faster and loading a z80 file about 25% faster. So definitely an improvement but nothing radical. Would still recommend the v2 over original as they are pretty much the same price and time is money
Retro enthusiast and author of Flynn's Adventure in Bombland, The Order of Mazes & Maze Death Rally-X. Check them out at http://tomdalby.com
Alex has been working on improving things further and the new version is now 4x faster at loading .Z80 snapshots on a Pi Zero 2 (multi-threaded) and loading times for the resultant carts are now loading 25% faster due to some interleaving.
Looking really good.
Retro enthusiast and author of Flynn's Adventure in Bombland, The Order of Mazes & Maze Death Rally-X. Check them out at http://tomdalby.com
I haven't reported about OqtaDrive's progress here for quite a while (almost a year). A lot has happened since then. An important change is that OqtaDrive has moved to a new home. The latest release is 0.3.4. If you're using OqtaDrive but did not notice the move to CodeBerg, have a look at the latest feature additions.
To all OqtaDrive users: What improvements or new features would you like to see in the next releases? OqtaDrive could go in many directions from where it is today. I can't promise anything, but a bit of feedback from you would help me focus the (scarce) development time I have available on what's actually useful
It's pretty much perfect for me, but three suggestions?
Add Multiface emulation to the hardware. Snapshots etc.
I know we can drag and drop single Z80 files and they are converted with @TomD's utility, but could we add multiple Z80s to the same MDR like you can at the command line with Z80onMDR?
How about a version that plugged start into the Spectrum, rather than requiring an Interface 1?
PeterJ wrote: ↑Tue Sep 13, 2022 11:49 am
It's pretty much perfect for me
PeterJ wrote: ↑Tue Sep 13, 2022 11:49 am
Add Multiface emulation to the hardware. Snapshots etc.
How about a version that plugged start into the Spectrum, rather than requiring an Interface 1?
I think both would go way beyond the scope I had originally set for this project. I deliberately limited myself to the Microdrive port only, so I don't see something like this happening in the near future. But who knows...
PeterJ wrote: ↑Tue Sep 13, 2022 11:49 am
I know we can drag and drop single Z80 files and they are converted with @TomD's utility, but could we add multiple Z80s to the same MDR like you can at the command line with Z80onMDR?
Interesting thought. I think that would be doable, just need to think a bit about it in terms of UI.
BTW, snapshot loading got really fast with release 0.3.3, thanks to @TomD's rework of the compression part.
There have been three more releases in the past three months. Here are the most important new features:
- client control - control OqtaDrive directly from your Spectrum and QL
- share the repo folder via WebDAV
- password protection for API endpoint
- support for Linino One board
- ported Tom Dalby's TAP support
- added support for searching in & loading from ZXDB
- added WebDAV client - you can now also manage your repo files from within the browser
- search result pagination