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. picoide.com/

November 10, 2025 - 02:41 UTC

39
16
453
No matter how cool this is... You really are showing your class and style with this single line.

"Fully open source firmware and hardware"

I will be building these for myself and friends, but I think you deserve a bit of "favorite beverage" money for all the work you put into these projects.
0
0
4
Bless you
0
0
0
Fantastic !!
0
0
3
Sweet!!!
0
0
3
Oh man! That's slick.
0
0
4
Looking forward to this 👍
0
0
0
Oh wow. I didn't think it was That tiny. It looked like a 5-1/4" bay sized tray at first glance, but it's really 3-1/2"? Insane. This is going to make those builds so much more fun to use.
1
0
2
Yeah, I really wanted to it to fit in 3.5" bay, kind of a "Gotek, but for CDs and HDDs". I also worked hard to design it to fit the largest screen possible in that bay size - it's so much bigger than the one usually used on the Gotek, for example.
1
0
11
So ready!!!!!!!! 👍👍👍👍
0
0
7
O_O

yes please
1
0
7
wonder how hard it would be to squeeze one into a late 97~ish laptop, cause thats where my fun be at. I know the cd drives tend to share a connector.
1
0
3
I didn’t realize how much I wanted “BlueSCSI but IDE” until now. Looking forward to the launch!
2
0
8
Note that the front panel will work with PicoIDE and BlueSCSI - happy to be a small part of this IDE project :)
1
0
12
To be fair, "ZuluIDE" is a thing. But closed source hardware (firmware is open though)
1
0
1
Front panel giving me flashbacks of doing an IPL on an AS400. :)
0
0
1
It's this what was being called the "DeskShaker" in testing? It looks awesome! Truly the creation of a dream for so many.
1
0
5
Yes, that is it!
0
0
5
Any chance this would support an Xbox?
0
0
1
POLPO! YES!
0
0
0
Will this support multiple devices at once ?
1
0
1
The hardware can support it, but I still have to actually complete the firmware work needed. 🤞
2
0
3
Is emulating tape-drives a future feature?
0
0
0
Love that!!!!!
0
0
3
I think this would be perfect for some of the retro systems I have, seems to be getting harder to buy blank CDs and DVDs and I'm sure my drives will fail eventually.
0
0
0
When this comes out, the first thing ima cram it into is an og xbox >__<' If we can emulate a disc drive and a hdd at the same time, thats gonna be awesome.
2
0
2
I haven’t tried mine out in my OG Xbox yet. It’ll be interesting to try!
1
0
2
My first thought as well. I've been wanting something like this for years.
0
0
1
Is there a tiny chance of emulating a Commodore CDTV optical drive in the future?
1
0
3
I’d call that a pretty tiny chance. I have a feeling it would need to be a lower level emulation. Likewise with the CD32 (which I have and thankfully can still read discs..)
0
0
3
Amazing work man!
0
0
0
very curious to try this with a PS2 and a stock network adapter! It’ll be a much more interesting solution than just slapping an IDE to SATA adapter onto it, especially with wireless image uploads
1
0
0
If you have the network adapter you can already stream PS2 games from your LAN using RetroNAS.
1
0
1
So it can emulate two devices, presumably on a single IDE connector? Will it work on my Amiga 4000? If we can get a 5.25 front plate, I'm in :)
0
0
0
I have a good and sizeable collection of IDE HDDs, but some of them started to fail, so this is perfect solution, especially considering it includes practical modern bells and whistles. Is there any way we can pre-order or reserve one unit now? I'm fearing I will miss the window.
0
0
0
Any chance this could be upgraded to a full-size SD card? MicroSD cards are just too small and too unwieldy for handling and shuffling around. There seems to be enough space on the pcb and the front panel.
1
0
0
It has wifi connectivity, so you shouldn't really need to shuffle things around. I agree that micro SD is a pita to deal with, but the best solution is no shuffling around at all.
1
0
0
Oh man, this is sweet. I would love to see a version of this that can connect over a network and access ISO files on a NAS.
1
0
1
The full version has WiFi so that wouldn’t be out of the question. It’d be slower than the SD card and have higher “seek” times but it’d probably still be usable for most games.
2
0
4
If this will work with my Japanese PC-98 I’ll gladly replace the mechanical drive in it!
0
0
0
I wonder how compatible this will be with the ITX Llama
1
0
1
AFAIK the ITX Llama used SATA and I haven’t tested this behind a SATA to PATA adapter yet. Should work though!
1
0
1
This is the coolest project! Nice work man!
0
0
3
Is it a Pi Pico2? Can you do a PicoGDROM?
0
0
0
I am super amped for this. That face plate us just gorgeous too, and chabce we could get a 5.25” carrier on the same theme with bigger buttons?
1
0
4
Our buddy @gutbomb.net has some fun ideas in mind for a 5.25” version…
1
0
8
If you need a tester, let me know!
0
0
1
Looks great!
0
0
10
man that is just beautiful
0
0
23
Eff yes!
0
0
0
This looks absolutely amazing Ian! Any estimation in when it will launch and how much cash I need to stash aside?
0
0
2
Want.
0
0
0
Looks like a cash machine
0
0
0
I can't really think of a better use case for this meme.
0
0
4