| Click here to select a new forum. |
| PicoIDE in a Mac? |
Posted by: Realitystorm on 2026-02-10 11:09:51
Anyone else thinking of trying one of these in a Mac that supports IDE? https://picoide.com/, https://www.crowdsupply.com/polpotronics/picoide
I was thinking of getting one to try in my 630 DOS system to see how it compares to my existing CF2IDE adapter.
For the 630 I assume only one .hda image will be accessible as the emulated Master IDE drive.
I know that the ZuluIDE also exists, so want to try it too at some point. |
Posted by: saybur on 2026-02-10 12:09:38
These will be very useful if you need specialty geometry, image-based optical emulation, audio output, a screen, image swapping, or other "fancy" features. IMHO, if all you need is basic bulk storage CF cards work just fine. $70 isn't unreasonable at all for a bespoke retro project but it is a fair bit higher than a CF card and cheap adapter.
Don't get me wrong, PicoIDE looks great and I'm planning to get one for my old PCs, but for IDE Macs with onboard SCSI I think using an existing modern SCSI emulator is a better approach: they're marginally cheaper and are able to present multiple drives from one peripheral (I think that's on the PicoIDE roadmap but isn't implemented yet, though AFAIK the Mac controllers don't support more than 1 drive anyway). |
Posted by: adespoton on 2026-02-10 15:44:34
Hmm... it's too bad this is a full-sized device; I was hoping for something for the G4 Mini, where SATA adapters generally don't fit. |
Posted by: Byrd on 2026-02-10 22:28:15
Where would you put the 3.5" bay as you can't access it from the front case of the 630? I'd say this is very much a DOS specific device right now and would not play nicely with selecting multiple Mac OS HFS partitions; maybe in future it will though with future software releases. |
Posted by: Realitystorm on 2026-02-11 14:24:18
Where would you put the 3.5" bay as you can't access it from the front case of the 630? I'd say this is very much a DOS specific device right now and would not play nicely with selecting multiple Mac OS HFS partitions; maybe in future it will though with future software releases. The front comes on and off fairly easily, and I doubt i would be changing the contents of the SD card often, I would more likely want to backup the .hda file before making major changes |
Posted by: Byrd on 2026-02-11 23:50:32
.... but it's probably not going to work if at all nicely on a Mac. |
Posted by: bakkus on 2026-02-13 06:30:50
Where does this idea come from?
polpo has been very open about vintage IDE Macintoshes being a target family of devices.
He even spent a considerable amount of time making it work on the infamous 630! |
Posted by: Byrd on 2026-02-14 17:07:52
@bakkus apologies, I hadn't read that - the documentation for the device appeared all very DOS and x86/PC centric. |
| 1 |