External USB Floppy Emulator GOTEK

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[geoimpala]

It is so cool that these Gotek drives can replace many frustrating and slow floppy operations! Including installing DOS/Win3.11, loading F6 drivers for Windows XP installs, etc and saving you huge amounts of time and effort managing all those floppy disks when you can have 100 of them on a single thumbdrive! Wohooo! :)

[mauriceunsworth]

Hi phil
i bought a one of these of ebay for less than twenty pounds, it is a grey gotek floppy emulator with a usb connection, but i painted mine with a can of matt black spray paint to match my other pc hardware, was easy to do i took three screws out of the top of case, the case come off then took the circuit board out of the case and took the little label off the front of the panel and put everything back when it had been painted.cost me next to nothing for the paint, i used car paint.the emulator is brilliant on my pc, really useful.

Regards

Maurice

[vicchopin]

Another great vid by Phil!
Nice to see that you're using laptops for a change! :)

[geoimpala]

I have two of the grey internal drives but haven't got around to using them. But I can't wait to! I'm going to replace all my computers drives with these since normal floppies corrupt like crazy. I literally have to toss a dozen in the trash each time I'm looking for one that still works.. I'm glad you made this video to help me get started.

[clipboard]

Hi Phil...
Valuable tutorial on the matter....
Thanks.👍

[turborunner]

Hi, if you want it black you could probably just swap the casing from the black internal drive with the usb one to get it black and then if you don't need the white internal drive just sell it on e-bay or give it away

[ValentinesEve]

I have another question regarding the grey external USB floppy emulator at 1:07. Were you able to swap disks with it for multi-disk games? I tried doing that with some MSX games that I was able to successfully run through the USB floppy emulator. But when I selected the next disk by pressing the right button (the button that increments the ones digit) on the emulator, the game I was playing was still stuck on the screen to “insert game disk A”.

[Michael-]

I suppose a USB flash drive formatted as NTFS will not work? In the video you formatted with FAT12.
3:16 - That's the most funny CD I have EVER seen, a half sized CD lol ! I've never seen such thing before.

[WaybackTECH]

They need to come out with one of these for IDE to emulate hard drives and cdroms. You should do a review of those external USB to PCI boards. I am curious if those really work or not. I don't know if there is really a good use for one of those, except to maybe test cards with.

[Banjo-Oz]

I've been looking everywhere for an EXTERNAL version of this (USB rather than FDD connector) without success. Link in description says "no longer available" and both eBay and Amazon turn up nothing. Why are these so hard to find?! I'd be happy with a GoTek, OpenFlops or anything if I could just connect it to a modern machine. Already have an internal one in my retro PC but I need one for my current PC too.

[fredflintstone]

What you can do with these and the ways you can load new firmware depends on the firmware that happens to be in the drive at the time. I bought a black one for $20 that came with some kind of firmware for a music keyboard. No matter. I used a serial interface connected to the pin header in the rear to load "FlashFloppy" ( a note to someone else who might want to do this is that I had to add pullup resistors to the TX and RX lines in order to get a connection. I added them temporarily on a breadboard). Once the FlashFloppy firmware is loaded it will allow updates by plugging in a USB stick with the proper kind of hex file on it. I also replaced the numeric display with an OLED which displays the Image file names as you step through them. I also found that once an image name was selected that it was immediately available and I didn't need to press both buttons. Having to press both buttons would be a pain and is perhaps why some go to the trouble of attaching a rotary encoder / switch to change image files. I don't really see the need for that since I don't work with large libraries of images at this time.
Currently I'm using my Gotek to emulate a DD floppy drive on a mid 80's IBM PC-XT. It works great.

[tubulartoy]

I have a idea: if I take my “modern” USB floppy drive and disassemble it and use the internal connector on my 34din floppy gotek?

[doctorsocrates]

Using one of these on my commodore amiga 500 and it runs great.

[geoimpala]

No version available for 1.2MB or 360K formats? Then again, I could transfer all of the older format programs to 1.44MB images without a problem?

[MattHalpain]

I enjoy the fluid and realistic animation of this game

[ValentinesEve]

Does the formatting tool that you used for the external USB floppy emulator at 3:16 formats the USB flash drive with 1000 disks? Or only 100 disks?

[rare]

I’ve searched everywhere and can’t seem to find the external USB variant anymore

[geoimpala]

Is there a limit for the capacity of the thumbdrive used for the 100 floppy images? Wouldn't storage space be wasted if you have a larger capacity drive? Can you use the chosen thumbdrive for anything else besides floppy images or not?

[bajhista]

Hey Phil. I have an 8gig flash drive and formatted it following your instructions using the Gotek Emulator. Problem I encounter was my 8gig flash drive can only save 1.38mb and that's it.

[NooNaN]

Thanks for another great video, Phil. Two questions... I wasn't aware of the 1000 format, so thanks. When doing so, will your previously recommended software just see the 1000 "disks" automatically?

Second... I have a Teac dual 3.5"/5.25" IDE drive. I don't have a way to get 5.25" floppys onto my modern PC, so use this a lot. Right now, I have to connect/disconnect this drive with the Gotek, which sucks because I have to open the case each time. If I use the USB Gotek, is there a way to have all 3 drives active in the system? Note that the combo drive does show as both a: and b: for the 3.5" and 5.25", respectively. Thanks!