Announcing the new ZuluSCSI Blaster
Just over two and a half years ago, Rabbit Hole Computing developed and brought to market the first RP2040-based SCSI emulator, which represented our second-generation ZuluSCSI. Since then, we've been hard at work, implementing support for the new Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and Pico 2 Wireless, which was accomplished late in 2024. This laid the groundwork for supporting the RP2350A's big brother, the RP2350B, which adds another 20 pins when compared with the 60-pin RP2350B. Leveraging this additional functionality is what allows ZuluSCSI Blaster to really shine.
New for 2025, ZuluSCSI Blaster is an advanced SCSI storage emulator and is powered by the Raspberry Pi Foundation's larger and more-powerful RP2350B microcontroller.
ZuluSCSI Blaster features
- USB-C connector
- 16-bit stereo CD Audio playback emulation (requires optional $5 plug-in DAC board)
- Support for ROM drives of up to 15.8 MB in size.
That's more than twelve 1.44MB floppy disks! - Expansion header with six GPIOs for future add-on functionality.
- Up to 18 megabytes/second read speeds, 11MB/sec write speeds
- Support for narrow Ultra SCSI (20MB/sec) timing, as well as SCSI-1 and SCSI-2
- SCSI Termination is DIP-switch controlled
- Firmware upgrade simplicity; As easy as placing a file on the SD card
- Highly configurable using a text-based ini file, ZuluSCSI.ini
- External activity LED pin header for attaching remote activity LED
- Designed to be powered via SCSI termination power when provided by the host
- Emulates up to 7 SCSI devices simultaneously, including CD-ROM, Magneto Optical, removable (SyQuest/Jaz-style), and SCSI floppy device types
- Initiator mode support for both reading from and writing to Hard Drives and CD-ROM drives via USB!
ZuluSCSI Blaster supports synchronous and asynchronous SCSI transfers, with read speeds of up to 18 megabytes/second. A sufficiently fast SD card and SCSI controller with Ultra SCSI support is required to achieve maximum throughput.
