I have written an epub ebook reader specifically for the PicoCalc with a Lyra board in it. The program is not fancy and it is certainly not perfect when rendering the ebooks. Several work-a-rounds, and compromises were required and mistakes were most certainly made, so if you run into a problem, open an issue on the github and I will get to it as fast as I can.
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Iâll soon be doing the sound mod directly on the Lyra itself but totally unfamiliar with the Lyra and Linux so have a couple of initial questionsâŚ
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What size micro SD card will the Lyra take and what is the Lyra max read and write speed ?. I have a 256gb Samsung Evo+ and 1Tb Sandisk extreme pro⌠Also why do some call it a TF card/TF card slot ?.
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Will the standard onboard PicoCalc RTC mod work with the Lyra and Hisptoots last build as is ?
I had really not intended to do this, but I got some feedback and apparently there are at least a few people who want to use the buildroot, but donât know how to get started with it. So here is a short tutorial on doing just that.
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Unfortunately most of these will not compile at all, of this list only tty-clock made the cut. Here is a list of the programs I have been able to compile so far.
cfiles (Text mode file manager)
Joe (Emacs like text editor)
LinksWWWbrowser (Text mode web browser)
MMBasic for Linux (Basic interpreter)
nethack (Old school dungeon crawl classic)
tty-clock (ncurses clock)
If you want to add one of these to your PicoCalc Lyra, I have provided some step by step guides for them below. If anyone has gotten any other programs up and running on PicoCalc Lyra Linux, hit me up so I can add it to the list. If you donât have the skill necessary, and would like me to try and build a particular program for you, ask and I will see what I can do for you. Just keep in mind, the build environment is very limited, and most programs simply donât build. These six that I got up and running are among 20 or so programs I attempted to build, including the ones I listed in my original post.
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Ahoj,myslĂĹĄ, Ĺže by fungoval fuse zxspectrum emulator?
Sorry, I only speak English, but Google translate says you want to know if I think Fuse zxspectrum emulator will compile.
I had a look at the build requirements and on the surface I donât see any reason why it wouldnât. However the only way to know for certain is to try. It is a fair sized program likely with some build requirements that are not obvious, so it is unlikely to build locally on the PicoCalc or in the buildroot. Your best bet is to try and build it on a Raspberry Pi Zero first, then copy the libspectrum and fuse folders to the PicoCalc Lyra for the final make install steps.
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Sorry for the Czech and thank you for the answer. Unfortunately, I canât do it myself, but I like to learn. I use Raspberry Pi regularly, I just never needed to compile anything.
That is fine, I am certainly willing to help. I will take a swing at compiling it and see if it compiles at all. If I can get it to work, I will give you a step by step guide for getting through the process. You will have to give me a few days though, I do work a full time job and I have a family, both of which demand my attention.
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Thank you for your willingness to help, time is not important. I have other responsibilities too. Iâm a fan of zx spectrum and it would be great. Zx Fuse is a very good emulator and I believe more people would appreciate it 
Itâs a bit off topic but I was looking at zxspectrum emulators developed for the pico, and some of them might be relatively easily ported to picocalc.
Yes, I know. But they are very simple. Fuse zx is a full-fledged emulator including peripherals and precise timings. And here we are talking about Linux on Luckfox Lyra, not RpiPico
FWIW I managed to expand the root partition in place (!) with the existing tools in the raw sd image (on a Mac here so to get @hisptoot image installed I needed to sudo dd if=picocalc-luckfox-lyra-sd-2025-04-19-sdcard-slot-raw.img of=/dev/disk4 bs=4M status=progress). That gave me a booting system (whoop!) with about 1.3Gb allocated (sd card is 32Gb). The steps to resize were:
mount | grep ' \ ' # identify disk and root partition name
parted /dev/mmcblk0 # parted mentioned unallocated blocks, I agreed to use
print # list partitions (uboot, boot, and an ext4 rootfs)
resizepart 3 # my root was on partition 3, yours may vary
End? 100% # parted will ask for the end of partition, enter 100%
reboot
resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p3 # to actually resize the filesystem
df -h # to check it worked!
3 Likes
I got some time this evening to run through my process of getting programs to compile for PicoCalc Lyra Linux and unfortunately I was unable to get Fuse ZX working. I canât say I was surprised, I mean at this point my success rate is about 20%.
The libspectrum library compiles just fine, however the Fuse ZX program just does not run. I was able to get it compiled on the Pi Zero with some work figuring out why it couldnât find libraries that were there. However once I transfer it over to the PicoCalc, the program crashes when I tried to run it. The program does not like how the LCD driver handles frame buffers.
So at this point it will take someone with some actual skill to port properly. I am a pretty mid hobbyist programmer and while I can knock out a couple hundred lines of code to solve a simple problem, this is well above my skill level to fix.
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Thank you for your time 
Interestingly, Simh compiles on the PicoCalc Lyra. For the real hardcore retro enthusiasts, this will let you go back to the heady days of 60âs and 70âs era computing and play on the likes of PDP10âs and 11âs.
Individually each one takes several minutes to compile. If you try to make them all, it will probably take several hours. I recommend just building the ones you are actually interested in. For more information and additional software kits, please visit the Computer Simulation and History site.
git clone GitHub - simh/simh: The Computer History Simulation Project
cd simh
make pdp10
sudo cp BIN/pdp10 /usr/local/bin
cd
Substitute pdp10 with whatever simulator you want to build. I am not 100% sure all of them will build, but the few I built did work, so YMMV. The next steps are for downloading a quick and easy pre-configured pdp10 setup called TOPS-in-a-Box. It is a fairly complete TOPS PDP10 setup, please, please read the README.txt file before running it, so you know what to do.
mkdir tops
cd tops
wget https://www.filfre.net/misc/TOPS-10.zip
unzip TOPS-10.zip
pdp10 tops10.cfg
Note: to exit the simulator press ctrl-e, this will take you to the sim> prompt, type exit to go back to the Linux command prompt.
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Hi,
I have compiled FBV. A Framebuffer image viewer:
Hope this helps someone.
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Thank you for pointing this out to me. I have added to my list of working programs and I have credited you with the find.
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Hi, How you were able to compile the Driver for unbuntu?
I have tried to download the kernel-headers for armhf with no success.
i did not require kernel-headers
the mashtasticd binary was built (on a faster Raspberry Pi) using pip version of platformio (Vistual Studio Code) - the meshtastic ui is essentially a lvgl frontend and able to show since we now support framebuffer display device and not just spi displays or x11
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I see. Thank you for the answer! I need to compile headers to make ubuntu work on the picocalc with the luckfox lyra and the drivers for Keyboard, Display, WIFI and so on. The Version of ubuntu, I currently used the recommended one Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, I use to do the crosscompiling does not longer have the linux-headers for armhf in the repository, for whatever reason. I think I have to checkout another Version, does anybody in the Forum have a tip for me?
1 Like