ZDzdw·Jun 23, 2025Submission
30 points · Open discussionpolpo
picogus
C2022–2025
polpo / picogus
picogus
Emulation of ISA sound cards and CD-ROM on Raspberry Pi Pico (GUS, SB/Adlib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS, Panasonic CD-ROM) with USB mouse/joystick support
8Distinct people
12Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
806GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Emulation of ISA sound cards and CD-ROM on Raspberry Pi Pico (GUS, SB/Adlib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS, Panasonic CD-ROM) with USB mouse/joystick support
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Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year12 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-09-23 09:35:43 UTC to 2025-06-23 18:02:33 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 3 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
12 sourcesRelated: retro PC stuff.
https://github.com/polpo/picogus
Emulates all kinds of sound cards, including the Gravis Ultrasound.
https://github.com/FreddyVRetro/ISA-PicoMEM
Emulates a memory extension, but also so much more stuff.
In I like the RP2040are the PIO blocks wide enough to handle an ISA bus? Or are you using a shift register or another port on the pico to interface with the bus?
edit: looking at the schematic it looks like you have the address/data pins multiplexed on an 8-bit port: https://github.com/polpo/picogus/blob/main/hw/PicoGUS-schema...
Curious if you did the HW design first, or SW design first, or how you came up with this particular solution.
In PicoGUS: Emulate ISA Sound Cards (GUS, Adlib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS) with a PicoPicoGUS: Emulate ISA Sound Cards (GUS, Adlib, MPU-401, Tandy, CMS) with a Pico
126 points · Open discussionThat one... you can find there: https://github.com/polpo/picogus/
In Building a Raspberry Pi based ultrasound imaging development platformThere’s Pi Pico GUS project now
https://github.com/polpo/picogus
In The (Almost) Definitive PC Sound Card Article (Pre-1990)PicoGUS – ISA Card Emulation on the Raspberry Pi Pico's RP2040 Microcontroller
12 points · Open discussionThe projects I mention here are not clones themselves but ever cheaper PCB prototypes and microcontrollers make it a fantastic time to create hardware for old systems (e.g. ISA). Enjoy these examples:
there is PicoGUS [0], a Gravis Ultrasound emulation, a Raspi Pico based PCMCIA WLAN card [1], EDO/FPM RAM modules [2], "Snark Barker", a soundblaster 1.0 clone [3]...
If you want more electronics stuff, I suggest you follow the creators of these on Twitter.
[0] https://github.com/polpo/picogus
[1] https://www.yyzkevin.com/pcmcia-pico-w-card/
[2] https://twitter.com/0xCats/status/1524708654913662977
[3] https://github.com/schlae/snark-barker
In Cloning a Rare ISA Card to Use a Rare CD Drive [video]PicoGUS: Emulation of the Gravis Ultrasound ISA Card on a Raspberry Pi Pico
5 points · Open discussionpcmcia is an ISA like bus. You can just bitbang ISA with pico
https://github.com/polpo/picogus/blob/main/sw/isa_io.pio
In Pcmcia Pico W CardPicoGUS: Emulation of the Gravis Ultrasound ISA Card on a Raspberry Pi Pico
13 points · Open discussion