Strange issue when using Picomemcard Plus with Picostation

[awaysm]

I am experiencing an issue when using the Picomemcard Plus (SD card reader) together with the Picostation (megavolt85). The Picomemcard is built on an RP2040 Zero board running firmware v1.0.2 and is being used on a PS1 with a PU-8 motherboard, along with a wired controller. When the Picomemcard is connected and the console is powered on, the PS1 boots directly into the system menu, causing the Picostation to be ignored or fail to initialize properly. This behavior does not occur when the Picomemcard is removed, which indicates that its presence is interfering with the Picostation’s operation during the boot process. I would like to know if there are any known issues, incompatibilities, or limitations when using Picomemcard Plus together with Picostation.

[lucaslealdev]

I would try using sd2psxtd firmware to check if it is software or hardware related.

[dangiu]

To be honest I don't know how Picostation works, maybe somebody else can chime in

[realJoshByrnes]

I can't imagine why PicoMemcard and Picostation should be incompatible.

These are my thoughts on what could be going wrong:

• Possibly attempting to load an incompatible binary from PicoMemcard (eg. FreePSXBoot)
• Picostation sending game ID to the memcard/controller port that PicoMemcard doesn't understand.
• Possible bug in Picostation or PicoMemcard (seems least likely, possibly both)

For the most part, the two shouldn't interact (at all). In recent years though, GameID has been sent by UniROM etc to the memory card controller, and we FreePSXBoot from the memory card likely interacts with the drive.

The chance of finding someone here who has Picostation is probably less likely than finding someone with PicoMemcard on the Picostation forums/trackers.

[realJoshByrnes]

I just realised that @paulocode's Pico in his PicoStation was a PicoMemcard before that. He might have some knowledge on if they worked together fine, or any issues?

It looks like the project is still 'in development' but also 'archived', so not sure what the status is.