It's official! #PicoIDE, the open source IDE/ATAPI drive emulator I've been working on for the better part of this year, will be launching at Crowd Supply! Go there to sign up for updates and to be notified when the campaign is live: www.crowdsupply.com/polpotronics/picoide

November 19, 2025 - 01:59 UTC

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I wonder if it would be possible to implement XTA hard drive emulation.
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The pinouts between XTA and IDE are different enough that it wouldn't be able to plug straight in, but it'd be possible with a passive adapter.
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Will Flamelily Retro be getting stock at the same time or after this campaign finishes?
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It'll have to be after the campaign finishes, but I'll work hard to make sure there's as little lag time as possible.
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I still love the sound of spinning rust, but this is superb as a CD-ROM carousel for my game collection, and as a backup drive. I want one!

Would UltraDMA/33 be impossible, or just hard work, to achieve?
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UDMA isn’t possible with this hardware design unfortunately. UDMA is really different from regular PIO and MWDMA so I figured it could wait for a different device in the future. I wanted to get those earlier modes 100% right first and ship something that solves the use cases I most care about.
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oh this is extremely cool!! well done!!
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Thank you!
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Incredible work! Thank you!
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Well this thing looks rad. Congratulations on getting it released
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Dang, Ian. That front-panel design looks absolutely fantastic.
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@gutbomb.net designed it, he’s done an amazing job
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I will never cease to be amused at the fact that this drive is several dozen times more powerful than most of the devices it's intended to be plugged to.
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What is the largest SD card it can handle? 128Gb?
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Nice! Will there be a host / backup mode as well? I have a bunch of CHS drives I need to backup which USB adapters don’t support.
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Unfortunately unlike SCSI where there's a more peer-like relationship between the initiator and targets, the host and device sides of IDE are different enough that I can't do that, at least with this hardware design. There are a couple projects starting up that will do what you're wanting, though...
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This is awesome! Can't wait to see it out in the wild
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Glad to say I’ve just bought the deluxe model. What are the plans for the standard one? Will it come with button/display holes as per the image, or will it just be a blank panel?Can you buy the parts separately? Tempted to also buy a standard one but just think it’ll look a bit messy without buttons
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Yes, it has holes in the case. It’s literally the same case as the deluxe version (the beige one to be exact). The idea is that you’ll probably have it mounted internally so the look wouldn’t matter as much. I plan on offering an upgrade kit eventually so you can add the display + buttons
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I am solidly in a "I don't have any machines that require IDE/ATAPI drives at the moment but I might have to buy one of these just in case" situation... (pretty much all my old retro machines are SCSI based and I have a handful of SCSI emulators).
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The only thing lacking to me these days is a scsi emulator that supports the faster scsi I have on some later Unix stuff

Those that do exist are hideously expensive (because youre keeping government gear going with infinite budget, right?), or unobtanium
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can it be a hard disk and a cdrom at the same time?
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In theory yes. Support will be added after it launches, as I'm too busy getting things ready to work on that for now.
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Making regular micro SD cards seem blazing fast in comparison. I love when people do this kind of thing.
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Dumb question. Does this work with XT-IDE?
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I love this idea. The panel layout is great! Would you consider offering a color-matched 3.5"->5.25" bay adapter? Both systems I'd use this in have their only 2 3.5" front facing slots already in use with internal floppy+zip or floppy+LS120 drives, and finding nice beige adapters is difficult.
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I'd pay more for the whole project if it came with the adapter by default, which would make it more flexible.
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Not gonna lie, I saw that @foone.bsky.social boosted this and saw the letters DE/AT and spent the next few minutes trying to figure out how that image tied into the death generator
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You may have solved my problem! Sensitively upgrading an old 386 laptop I've got with a 40MB CHS addressed drive and BIOS.
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Looks great. Can't wait to order one. Have had a look at alternate options, but nothing as nice as this.
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Open source ❤️❤️❤️
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