A similar project for PCMCIA[1] is being developed by yyzkevin. Really exciting IMO, not yet available, but I submitted a response to their google sheet, hoping to get one of these when the preorders start.
It’s interesting to note that the WiFi on the PicoMEM is based on code from yyzkevin originally from his PCMCIA project. And the PicoMEM uses PSRAM code from my PicoGUS project. And then PicoGUS uses Sound Blaster code from yyzkevin. And now I’m getting inspiration from how PicoMEM does address decoding. And so on and so on… This is a pretty cool little open source community we’ve created around the RP2040, cross-pollinating each others’ projects.
Funny to see the FreddyV nick again, he made (according to my musician friend) the most accurate (at the time) XM-replayer for small demoscene productions.
There was many replayers back in those days but tracking what FastTracker2 did bug-for-bug with regards to effects like arpeggios and volume slides made it quite tricky to get things to sound correctly in the third party players.
I'm quite surprised they stuck with the off-the-shelf Pi Pico module. When you're designing your own PCB already, why not just use the bare RP2040 chip? It'd save them an awful lot of money, and they clearly already have the necessary hardware design skills.
The only part you can't trivially clone is the wifi module, really.
Regulatory/Licensing and complexity of pcb design for rf and assembly issues and all that aside, if you look up the cost on the CYW43 wireless chip, it costs more than the Pico W module last I checked.
Wireless is a very popular feature on PicoMEM from the discussions I see and from my own personal use.
Look at PicoGUS [0], at first it was a similar semi-prototype board with an off-the-shelf Pico module and then it was redesigned into a neat simple expansion card.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoJ12leojwo