Gotek Floppy Emulator Jumper Settings

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Gotek 'floppy' clicking driving me nuts!! Can it be disabled with a jumper? Markpaterson: support.Hardware: 20: 31 July 2016 03:56: New external floppy drive case + interface ready for Gotek & HxC: strim: News: 4: 03 July 2015 18:00: Using GOTEK USB floppy emulator as external floppy for Amiga 1200: sbergmann: support.Hardware: 6: 04 April 2015. GOTEK Floppy Emulator Simulator. I've been using the GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator Simulator since the beginning of 2013 and they have never let me down. I haven't encountered a single glitch, bug or issue and can highly recommend them. You can purchase them for around A$ 25 on eBay.

This is a step by step guide how to install the cheap USB Floppy emulator GOTEK to ENSONIQ VFX SD. Its rather easy when you know how 🙂

We will flash 3rd party firmware into the Gotek drive and then we create a disk image for the USB stick. You should be able to solder a header into the PCB using soldering iron.

What you need:

  • Gotek USB Floppy emulator (ebay)
  • Jumper and 3 & 5 pin headers
  • PL2303HX USB To RS232 TTL Adapter with some wires (ebay)
  • Pay the Frenchman a tenner here and get your programming password.
  • Soldering iron

The link above points to the french guy Jean-François del Nero. He did a great programing job, but his blog is a mayhem. Some pages are French, some English. There are loads of duplicate files… To dig the info you need is a PITA. You need this ZIP only, it contains all necessary files.

Gotek floppy emulator format

Now, disassemble your GOTEK, and prepare your board. Solder the headers into programming port:

Like this:

Install your PL2303HX programmer. Plug it to your PC. It should download the drivers automatically (I use W7). Note the COM port number.

Once it is working, pull it out from USB and connect it to the GOTEK board like this:

  • GND to GND
  • 5V to 5V
  • RX to TX
  • TX to RX
  • put jumper across BOOT0 and VCC3.3
Emulator

You do not connect programmer’s 3.3V anywhere. Just leave it. Now plug everything to USB port on your PC

Run the FLASHER, (file SecSerialBridge.exe) and try to open your COM port. Then enter your account info and click Connect. The program should say Device Detected:

As you can see I have zero units left as I paid only for one unit. If you have everything ready, make sure your SKYPE won’t fuck up your programming process by ringing, close it down and press PROGRAM. The GOTEK should be programmed within few minutes.

At this point the hard bit is over. I should have menitoned that this was only a BOOT LOADER, and now we have to upload the FIRMWARE.

Note: Before you install GOTEK into the instrument, you should install jumpers to S0 and MO positions. I don’t think it’s necessary but It works for me and I haven’t tried it without them. I’m too lazy to open the lid again…

Disconnect the programmer and install the GOTEK into your instrument. After power on, it should say Ldr (the instrument’s display should stay dark). Format your USB stick (everything but NTFS I think) and unpack the file HXCFEUSB_V3_0_33_12a.UPD from that ZIP into the root of the USB stick. Then insert it into GOTEK – it shoud do nice sneak animation on display. Once it is finished it should say hXc and your Ensoniq should initialize. To manually flash another firmware, just press and hold both GOTEK buttons while power on. It should say Ldr and you’re ready to flash.

Create your USB Floppy bank by unpacking content of this zip file to your USB. There is 100 images already formatted for instant use.

It seems like Ensoniq VFX SD uses the same format as COMODORE AMIGA, 820KB DS DD, which is the reason why it refuses every PC floppy. If you want to create your own images using the program from Jeff, here is a RAW IMAGE SETTINGS for the IPFConverter program, which is also part of the ZIP file:

This is working for me, hope it will work for you!

Peace.

2017/12/07 EDIT: I’m looking for the original disk images.

If you want to share them, please leave the comment.

Downloads:

This is a great solution for replacing a old floppy drive. It works like this:
The gotek has built in 999 locations where you can place a floppydisk image. This image contains the contents of one floppy disk. These pre made images are usually easy to find on the Internet, but you can easily make a image of a real floppy disk you own.

All you have to do to use the gotek, is to put the images on a USB pen drive, and assign each disk a number. The gotek has 2 buttons in the front, where you can select the disks. One for up and one for down. Lets say you want to boot from a game or program that you assigned to slot 5. All you have to do, is to press the buttons untill the display shows 005, and the disk will load. You can press the buttons back and forth to select images, and your computer will behave as if you inserted that floppy disk. Its a great way to get rid of those old worn out floppy disks, and great to save space.

Settings

Available upgrades:
-Speaker that emulates floppy loading sounds!
-OLED screen that replaces the original display, so that the name of the disk is shown in letters instead of numbers, meaning you dont have to keep track of where you assigned your images.

Gotek Floppy Emulator Jumper Settings Free

The drive itself: The drive comes new with a really bad firmware that hardly can be used to anything. So you need to circomvent the protection of the drive, and flash it with a new firmware. I use FlashFloppy. If I sell one of these, they are already flashed with FlashFloppy.

Once the protection has been broken, future updates is as easy as to put the updated firmware in the root of the USB stick, and power on the gotek with both buttons in the front pressed in at once. The drive will now update itself. Be careful not to disconnect the power during this process.

This drive can be connected to any computer that has the same Shugart 34-pin header, such as

Acorn Archimedes
Acorn BBC Micro
Akai Synthesizers
Amstrad CPC
Atari ST
Commodore Amiga
DEC
Dragon
E-mu ESI-32
Ensoniq
General Music (GEM) Synthesizers
IBM PC
Korg
Memotech
MSX
NEC PC-98
Roland
Sequential Circuits Prophet 3000
Spectrum
Tandy Color Computer
TI-99/4A
UKNC, DVK

Gotek Floppy Emulator Jumper Settings Chrome

The FlashFloppy firmware ensures that they all work.

Emulator

Gotek Floppy Emulator Jumper Settings

WARNING! If you connect the power cable in the back wrong, IT WILL KILL THE DRIVE.

Some computers require different jumper settings on the drive. Usually all you have to do, is to move jumper S1 to S0. If that dont work, try these options:

Jumper at S1 only
Jumpers at JC and S0
Jumpers at JC and S1

These files must reside in the root of the USB stick for it to work

Floppy Disk Emulator Software

This project with PCB and parts can be purchased on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/usr/kirsti_73
or from Sellmyretro.com