The Pico-286 project is an endeavor to emulate a classic PC system, reminiscent of late 80s and early 90s computers, on the Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040/RP2350 microcontroller). It aims to provide a lightweight and educational platform for experiencing retro computing and understanding low-level system emulation.

• 8086/8088/80186/286 CPU Emulation: At its core, the project emulates an Intel cpu up to 286 family.
• Retro Peripheral Emulation: Includes support for common peripherals from the era.
• Text and Graphics Modes: Supports various display modes common in early PCs.
• Sound Emulation: Recreates sound capabilities of classic sound cards.
• Designed for Raspberry Pi Pico: Optimized for the RP2040/RP2350 with minimal external components.
• Cross-platform: can be built for Raspberry Pi Pico and Windows.

The Pico-286 emulator is designed to run on Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040) based hardware.

• Supports various hardware components, including:

  • PS/2 keyboard and mouse
  • SD card for storage
  • VGA and HDMI for video output
  • Audio output
  • NES gamepad

• Minimal Configuration:

  • Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040)
  • External PSRAM chip (minimum 8MB recommended for broader compatibility) connected via SPI.

• Recommended Configuration for Maximum Performance:

  • Raspberry Pi Pico 2 (RP2350)
  • QSPI PSRAM for faster memory access.

• Development Platform:

  • This project primarily uses the MURMULATOR dev board as its hardware base. This board provides an RP2040, PSRAM, and various peripherals suitable for the emulator's development and testing.

The emulator supports the following sound card emulations:

• Tandy 3-voice
• Creative Music System (Gameblaster)
• Sound Blaster
• Adlib

The emulator supports the following graphical adapter emulations:

• CGA (Color Graphics Adapter)
• TGA (Tandy Graphics Adapter)
• VGA (Video Graphics Array)

Information on how to build and run the Pico-286 emulator will be provided in a separate document or a Wiki page (link to be added).

Contributions to the Pico-286 project are welcome! Please refer to the CONTRIBUTING.md file (to be created) for guidelines.

The Pico-286 project is typically released under an open-source license (e.g., MIT, GPL). The specific license details will be found in a LICENSE file in the repository. (To be confirmed by checking repository)