PicoIDE – An open IDE/ATAPI drive emulator
5 comments
·November 16, 2025trevithick
This is really cool. I'm glad people are out there making this stuff even if I'll never have a use for it.
What are the use cases for this? I'm guessing retro computing and possibly very old machines tied to very obsolete hardware that can't be virtualized (e.g. manufacturing controls).
deaddodo
This is most useful for retrocomputing, and that’s gonna be the target demographic.
While it’s true that industrial and manufacturing sometimes have really old hardware, that’s usually less due to them not having newer options and more due to preferring something tried and true (it “just works” for their workflow) or the sheer economics of upgrading; in most of those cases, there’s already a flow for interfacing with newer technology (FTP or USB 1.0/2.0 commonly). So this device wouldn’t offer much benefit, if any.
ranger_danger
Is CD-ROM subchannel data accurately emulated for both audio and data modes?
polpo
Currently, it implements the ATAPI READ SUB-CHANNEL command and fully supports the current position data format code. Other format codes like ISRC and UPC currently return dummy data, but wiring that up would be pretty straightforward. Supporting image formats like CloneCD's .ccd/.img/.sub that store arbitrary subchannel data also seems doable, but would definitely be more work.
Fun seeing this posted - I'm the creator of the project. While it's meant to be a generic IDE/ATAPI emulator the two main use cases I envisioned for the project are in the area of retro computing: CD-ROM under MS-DOS and Windows 9x, where software-only virtual drive emulation options are lacking or nonexistent, and IDE hard drive emulation on early IDE machines where the drive geometries are fixed.
Since the project has been announced, lots of people have come out of the woodwork with other fun potential use cases, such as CD-ROM replacement in arcade cabinets and the Dreamcast, and hard drive replacement in multitrack recorders and samplers.