Monthly Archives: January 2025

Instructions, News

PiStorm FAQ

Posted on by Peter

Over the last few weeks, we have compiled the most frequently asked questions from our customers about the PiStorm in an FAQ. The list is certainly not yet complete and will therefore continue to be added to.

  • Can the Raspberry Pi 5 be used for the PiStorm?
    • No. The Raspi 5 has been changed in many ways and unfortunately cannot (yet) be used.
  • Can the Raspberry Pi 4 be used for the PiStorm Classic or PiStorm 2k?
    • Yes and no. It usually works, but is not officially supported. In other words: If there are difficulties, you are responsible and there will hardly be anyone who can help.
  • Do you sell CaffeineOS?
    • No. CaffeineOS is free software, based on AmigaOS 3.9 and was created by Pedro Cotter. We offer our customers suitable SD cards with the current version of CaffeineOS for the price of the SD card. CaffeineOS can be downloaded here => https://bit.ly/m/CaffeineOS and installed on a suitable SD card with the WinImager under Windows. The Win32 Disk Imager can be downloaded here => https://win32diskimager.org/.
  • Do you sell AmigaOS?
    • Yes, we are one of the larger European Hyperion Entertainment partners and sell several hundred licenses every year. AmigaOS 3.2 is commercial software and is constantly being developed further from the license fees. AmigaOS 3.3 has been in development for some time now. Please note that AmigaOS 1.2 – AmigaOS 3.1 is to be licensed from Cloanto. From AmigaOS 3.2 Hyperion Entertainment has the rights to the Kickstart and the Workbench. We offer AmigaOS in different bundles for all Classic Amigas from Amiga500 – Amiga4000 and with images for many common accelerator cards.
  • AmigaOS or CaffeineOS?
    • It depends 🙂 In principle, we recommend the use of CaffeineOS. Beautiful desktop, easy to use and very user friendly. But unfortunately nobody can say how long Caffeine will still exist. It has already disappeared overnight several times and only Pedro Cotter maintains “his” distribution.
    • AmigaOS is commercial software and with the Emu68 imager tool it has become very easy to do a very good basic installation with all the tools you need. However, it is also a very classic 80s/90s workbench desktop and many tools have to be installed manually.
  • Does the PiStorm require cooling?
    • Yes and no. PiStorms with Raspberry Pi 3 and 4 do not require cooling. Only the CM4 module on the PiStorm32 CM4 + I/O module requires its own passive or active cooling. We offer the cooling modules from Waveshare. We generally recommend the active cooler module. The fan runs at 8000rpm +/-10% and is not controllable via the CM4 and I/O board. It is so quiet in operation that you can hardly hear it.
  • Does wired Ethernet work?
    • Yes and no. Under Emu68 (standard and recommended) there is no driver for wired Ethernet. Only under Musashi can wired Ethernet be configured. Linux knowledge is required and it is not easy.
  • Do the mouse and keyboard work via USB?
    • Yes and no. Under Emu68 (standard and recommended) there is still no driver for mouse + keyboard via USB. Only under Musashi USB mice and keyboards can be configured. It is not that easy.
  • What are Emu68 and Musashi?
    • Emu68 is a so-called “bare metal” 68k emulator developed by Michal Schulz. The Github can be found here => https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68. Emu68 is the recommended emulator for the PiStorm – even if some drivers are still missing. Michal’s patron page can be found here => https://www.patreon.com/c/michal_schulz/posts. We support the development regularly.
    • Musashi is a 68k emulator based on Linux, which unfortunately has not been developed further for several years. Without Musashi there would probably be no PiStorm and many of the PiStorm docs still contain references to Musashi. Since Musashi is based on Linux, separate drivers are not required for all possible devices (USB, Ethernet etc pp), so that Musashi supports more hardware on and in the Amiga. However, the emulation is much slower and the configuration is much more complicated. We strongly advise against using it
  • Where can I find documentation and help for PiStorm?
  • How do I control the settings of the PiStorm, especially the emulated processor speed and the graphics resolution for the Amiga?
    • For both CaffeineOS and AmigaOS there are corresponding tools to easily change the command line options via a GUI.
  • Does WLAN/WiFi work?
  • How do I create the required SD card with Emu68 myself?
    • For AmigaOS we recommend the Emu68-Imager Tool. This only runs under Windows 10/Windows 11. MacOS is – also in the future – not supported. It can be found here => https://mja65.github.io/Emu68-Imager/. SD cards of any size from any manufacturer can be used.
    • The image for CaffeineOS can be downloaded here => https://bit.ly/m/CaffeineOS and copied to a 64GB card using the Win32 Imager. Attention: The image is so large that in principle only the 64GB SanDisk Extreme will fit. These are available in our store (with and without CaffeineOS at the same price).
  • Does the entire graphics output run via HDMI?
    • No! “Only” the software that supports Picasso96/RTG is currently output via HDMI. Everything else still runs via RGB and still requires 2 connections to the TV/monitor! The team around Claude Schwarz is currently working on a “Framethrower” for the PiStorm, which also redirects the RGB outputs to the HDMI port of the Raspberry. First demos exist but there is no ETA for the hardware extension (yet). Until then we recommend the parallel use of our RGB2HDMI adapters in the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000, but it also requires 2 HDMI ports with the adapters *or* all outputs must be output to RGB. This can be configured classically on the Workbench. For the Amiga1200 there is a solution from Indivision that works well (Scan Doubler).
  • Does the sound run via HDMI?
    • No! As with the RGB2HDMI adapters, the sound output from the Paula chip is not “redirected” to the Denise chip and there is no emulation here. As before, small external speakers must therefore be connected to the RCA outputs.

If you have any further questions, please send an e-mail to info@retrobuddys.com.