Unofficial FUZIX images for pico and pico2

PicoCalc
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I wanted to try FUZIX on my pico2 so I had to build it myself. I don’t really know anything in particular about FUZIX, but I knew that I didn’t want to have to remember how this stuff worked in the future, so I’ve automated building and publishing of FUZIX images for both the pico and pico2 over in my fork of FUZIX:

You can download the images from its release page:

These builds are based on the patch that was made available over in the PicoCalc repo https://github.com/clockworkpi/PicoCalc/blob/master/Code/FUZIX/fuzix.patch
(I’m not allowed to post more than 2 links at once)

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Thank you! I’ve been curious about this but hadn’t gotten around to trying it yet.

Is wifi supported on the Pico2? The FUZIX website didn’t really mention it, though they did say wifi was supported for some other platforms. Figured I’d find out when I got aroudn to trying it, and now you’ve made that easy to do. :slight_smile:

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great job

I included your pre-compiled uf2 in PicoCalc/Bin/PicoCalc_Fuzix_v1.1_pico2.uf2 at master · clockworkpi/PicoCalc · GitHub

Is that ok right?

@wez

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How do you install the .img file? do you just flash to blank sd card using any program.

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AFAICT, there is no working networking out of the box; looks like it will need some hacking

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Yeah, that’s ok. I will note that I just pushed an update that doubles the amount of usermem that is available to run programs on the pico2, so you may want to grab that build.

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The SD card that comes with the picocalc is pre-partitioned to include a FUZIX root partition in its last 32MB.

If you want to update that image, you can use dd. There’s a little bit about that in GitHub - wez/FUZIX: FuzixOS: Because Small Is Beautiful and also in the picocalc SD readme docs, but the gist is shown below

MAKE SURE to check which partition you are writing to with the command below, as you will DESTROY whatever is on that partition!

$ sudo dd if=filesystem.img of=/dev/sdb2 oflag=direct bs=8192 status=progress

Please note that, until the most recent build from a few minutes ago, the filesystem image I was publishing in the releases section was a generic image. I switched that to one that is slightly more pico-friendly and that includes a utility that will reboot in flashing mode, which is more convenient than trying to press the bootsel button: picoctl flash.

So I recommend fetching the latest release zip before you flash the image, just to save an extra couple of steps later.

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There is a working example of it out there though: https://youtu.be/BZF0F5MT4w8?si=4z5GC96gTgcIAcuI

Very unlikely to compile in it’s current state, but an excellent starting point: Comparing EtchedPixels:master...wiznetmaker:rpipico-eth-w5500 · EtchedPixels/FUZIX · GitHub

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How do we prepare the SD card for fuzix? (for those who don’t have a Linux machine available)

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If you are using macOS, things should not be that different (even though I don’t know the details as I am not really a Mac user even though I borrow a Mac occasionally for testing things). If you are a Windows user, sorry, but your best option is to create a Linux live USB and boot off that, and then follow the directions for Linux.

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Are there not equivalent tools for non Linux os that could be used?

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If you are using xBSD or macOS, there should be equivalent Unix tools available. If you are using Windows, your options are to either use a Linux live USB or use WSL2, since it is not reasonable to expect developers who develop for a Unix-like OS (Linux, xBSD, or macOS) to go out of their way to write tools specifically support those Windows users who are unwilling to use WSL2 or a Linux live USB.

(This is because the Windows API’s are substantially different from the Unix-type API’s shared by Linux, xBSD, and macOS such that in many cases supporting Windows outside of WSL2 may be a significant rewrite.)

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Thanks, that is super helpful.

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I sense sarcasm in your response. The fact of the matter is that there are just certain sorts of things that are easier to do under Unix-like OSes than Windows.

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i’m a staunch windows 10 LTSC user. just install WSL2 tbh

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Thanks, that is super helpful.

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Thing is - I’m often in the field without flexibility on the computer I can use. I know I’m not alone in that case.

Users of picocalc should not be required to carry multiple computers to enjoy their handheld. Makes no sense at all.

WSL seems like a viable solution