**IMPORTANT IF USING WINDOWS 10** When you open each "disk", it will not show the name, ie. h:/001. So you need to set the programs compatibility to Windows 7 and set to Administrator. Then it should work fine!
Gotek floppy emulators have evolved a lot since this video was made, the latest revisions now come with an integrated little OLED display and a rotary dial which makes image selection super-easy. Costs a bit more, but totally worth it. Moreover, you don't need any special software to manage your floppy disk images any more with the recent versions of FlashFloppy firmware (I used v3.14a which is a stable beta build). Just get a USB flashdrive, something small so as not to waste storage, format it as FAT32, chuck as many bootable floppy disk images on it as you want and insert into the Gotek. You don't need to worry about file naming and folder arrangements. Choose the image you want with the rotary dial, the OLED screen will show you the filename for easy identification and that's it, it just works. Couldn't be simpler. I've tested on my vintage Compaq PC Pentium III machine using MS-DOS 6.22, Windows 98SE, OPENSTEP 4.2 for Mach, BeOS 5.03 and various bootable Linux floppies and it works flawlessly. You can configure for other systems through jumpers and the FlashFloppy config file, but the defaults are optimal for use on an IBM PC. The tiny OLED screen even warns you if you plug in the floppy cable in the wrong orientation! That's actually really helpful.
Just a little tip for those having trouble flashing their Gotek, I was using my Windows 10, went through all the steps, kept coming up Gotek not found, undetected etc, so i tried various USB to USB cords, still no luck, then tried a Mac USB to USB, (female to male), and Wala..my Gotek is now flashed successfully, go figure! Thanks for this great video Phil...
This seems like a great idea. I'll probably be looking at picking one up at some point. I feel like the best way to keep up with which floppies on are a given usb drive is to keep a simple .txt file on the very first floppy, and just keep a nice running list of what's on the rest of the drive.
You have no idea how helpful your videos are. My cousin dug out his old AST Adventure and we got it working, and the bug bit me so I salvaged some old parts from my girlfriend's dad's basement and got my own DOS rig going in a noisy old office machine. Now I'm on my way to building one from the ground up.
I have had an old inop 486 for decades, thinking that someday I would get it running again. This week into my lap fell an additional THREE 486 computers that have various problems. Thanks to your videos, website full of data and resources, and some ebay purchases, I hope to be getting three of the four back in action. I'm pretty sure the mobo is dead on one of them. Anyway, thanks for doing what you do! MUCH appreciated!
By the way, as a general rule on disk drives, pin 1 is always on the side with the power connector. You can look on the PCB for Pin 1, but that's a LOT of work especially if the drive's already in the system :)
I use one of these in an old Haas CNC machine and I could never figure out how to access more than just the first virtual floppy until I watched your video. Thank you!
Looked at this video for a tutorial on using a floppy emulator. This was a demonstration of how much you know about it and was very much over the heads of anyone looking for simple direction.
Hey Phil; Thanks so much for your content. It has been very helpful in putting a couple of retro systems together. I purchased a GoTek and had all the same problems with Windows 10 and V2 of the USB Floppy Emulator software. Installing on XP did the trick and works as you describe. I did install on a root directory and pointed the backup and disk directories there. Thanks again.
Thanks, the damn software is the only reason this thing has been sitting in a drawer for 2 years. Could never get it to work. Wanted to try it tonight again since my 386's floppy drive finally failed. Thanks for linking that other software! Worked great.
Hey everyone i seen on another video,you can format your usb drive on system start up with usb drive in the its port,hold the 2 button on the right in friont at the same time & it will format the drive without any software!! Hope that helps! Um im ordering like 3 asap!
As a retro computer owner these are indispensable! You have to have one nowadays if your going to own or collect a retro computer especially if your running the older operating systems.
A Gotek is a very good solution to replace any floppy drive. I bought recently a such drive, but mine doesn't have the ST MCU inside, there is an Artery Microcontroller inside, that's important if you plan to flash an alternative firmware to it. I flashed the FlashFloppy firmware on that device. You need only a paper clip and an USB A-to-A cable, then u can expand the possibilities of the drive and you'll can get rid of the management software, so u can put the image files directly on the usb drive, u can optional install an OLED display in the drive, so u can put your images even on Linux to the USB drive. ;)
Thanks for the nice manual, works great! Biggest USB size the program can recognize is about 4GB (with my 8GB stick it shows 3,42GB), but doesn't matter because 100 floppys only need about 150mb. The first disk ist available in the windows explorer as removable flash drive :) (so it can be written very easy without the program)
Picked up one of these for my retro DOS machine last month and haven't been able to get this to work properly. I keep getting general read errors when trying to read from a USB stick in Win98/DOS. Sometimes it will show the directories in DOS, but will not format, read or write. I'm using the software Phil mentioned to format the USB. EDIT : I'm an idiot, my floppy cable was plugged in incorrectly on both sides 😂
I highly recommend Folder Axe for use w the Gotek, it generates sub-folders (subdirectories, whatever) from a single folder and it’ll do it by size, say 1mb or 720kb, which makes loading files to the Gotek a breeze! Worked magic on all my Sierra GOG downloads and now they’re ready for use on my 486 :)
Another super helpful video, just finally got around to buying one of these after having my 1000th or so non readable floppy. The gotek is awesome, and the recommended software in this video is as well.
Great vid Phil, thanks for making it. The process is more involved than I was expecting, but I guess it makes sense to require software to manage the special formatting.
It's much simpler if you get two GOTEKs. One internal one (this one), and another external one (white model, has a USB port at the back). Then you basically have an internal Floppy and a USB Floppy drive and you can easily transfer files between old and new without software.
The software available for these Gotek emulators is pretty hopeless, particularly for writing to slots 100+. After reading a blog post about directly editing the usb stick image, I made some windows batch files to automate the process. Now all you need to do is open the ones in WinImage you want to change, and write them back to the stick when you're finished. Here are the scripts for anyone interested: github.com/xtcrefugee/gotek-usb-batch-files
Good luck ordering these from China. I ordered two Gotek floppy emulators from merchants (and these were given good reviews by other Roland Sampler users and both times they got lost in the mail. I'm not sure why it doesn't occur to them that their customers might actually WANT to pay a little extra for trackable and insured parcels. I went with the HxC option from Lotherek and it went without a hitch.
Thank you so much for explaining how to use this! When I bought mine online, the documentation (or lack of) and the shitty software it came with made the prospect of using it more of a pain than a help.
I just purchased one, and when I went to test it in my SS7 PC I kept getting a "Floppy Drive(s) fail" error. It turns out that you cannot run them on the same floppy channel as another drive (in this case, I have a 5.25" Floppy drive as the B device). DS1 Jumper was set. Of course, having one kind of negates the need for the real drives, but it would allow more flexibility. Regardless, Phil, I'm pretty sure my wife should despise you. You've compelled me into getting a fair amount of gear lately. SS7 era stuff and MIDI modules. Great videos, and great information!
Haha :) Now regarding two drives, I did use the GOTEK with another, real, 1.4 MB drive in the same machine and it worked fine. The BIOS must support two drives and you need a cable that supports two, most these days just support a single drive.
Interesting. I have it on a FIC PA-2013 SS7, and I normally use a 3.5" and 5.25" drive on the same cable and channel. I only swapped the 3.5" for the Gotek. Once I disconnected the 5.25" drive, it was able to detect and operate the emulator.
Hi Phil, This may be of some interest to you. I was able to get a Kingston 2g Micro SD card to work in one of the USB pen type Flash card readers. Now I do not have to tie up one of my 64g PNYs. I'm doing a retro multi boot build using CF cards and Micro SDs as my HDDs. I have it running DOS/3.11/98/200Pro/XP on cards. Win 7 is the main O/S on a SSD. Having this now working on one of the 2g Micro cards, fits right in with the theme. Thank you again for pointing out the USB compatibility issue. It was the key I needed.
Thx alot for doing these videos. Been looking forward for this one! Wish i had this when i was messing with my old compaq deskpro xl as it doesnt have the software to change bios settings on the motherboard but on harddriver or 3 floppy. Lucky for me i notist this After i had formated the drive on it... fun time to find those files And geting them to 3 floppys that worked. Keep up the great work!
Many thanks for the video, I have grabbed one to replace the failed floppy in my 386dx40. As an aside, The jumpers can be used for device address setting. I have seen the unit used in an Amiga and the jumpers marked s0 and s1 are used to select df0 and df1. PC uses twisted cable to set drive a: or b:Chris
Installed one on my yamaha PSR-540. Great thing you kept the software available, since the website of the German company no longer exists (maybe a good idea to remove the link from your website ;-)). On my Win 10 machine, I had some issues with the software. Apparently, Win10 does not like it to put data in the Program Files directory. Everything started working as soon as I dedicated a different folder for saving the data. Too bad, it only emulates up to 100 floppies. Today, a USB stick would easily be capable to emulate a lot more, which would be convenient.
Thank you Sir that was so helpful. Now I can save the midi files I compose on my Roland E-500 without problems. The disappearance of floppy drive (and floppy disk) was a bad dream for many musicians having old keyboard models. But that floppy emulator with that software saved the situation. Fast advance of technology !!!
Dude, is there any setting about its jumper for my Roland g800. I still don't recognize how to use that jumper because my Roland g800 don't recognize USB flash disk even I have format it to floppi. Help please
@@nangosoda Sorry for being late to respond. Jumper settings are not the same for all Roland models. Roland agent told me that it didn't work at all with some models. Hopefully your g800 is not one of these. Anyway you have to try all probabilities you may have in your jumper socket until you find the right one. That's what I did. Just be patient and try them all. You may be lucky to find the right combination from the first few trials. Good luck my friend.
@@musadube1239 Unfortunately I know only one person who still has the E-500 but it's not in good conditions. I'm so sorry for being late to respond. Just saw the message today. Please forgive me.
Very good review! I have been wanting one of these for my Amiga 1200 for a while (I know it needs modified firmware), but for now, I'll just stick to buying one for the good old Pentium 200MHz :)
These look so cool. The use of them going forward maybe not too much as the older stuff becomes non existent. I'd love to still have some of the older hardware still available to me.
6:25 & 6:45 I can get to. But at 7:03 when I try to click on 'open', it gives me an error (no matter which number I try & this is my 4th USB key I've tried) - "Batch Manage Tool" error of "The system cannot find the path specified." Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Thanks a million for the links, the walk thru, etc!! I'd have been lost!
Hi! From the start, let me thank you for all the content that you make! it´s awesome and made my time at home during this pandemic a lot more interesting. I've bought one gotek drive and after formating the usb stick (32gb) in the batch manage tool 1.40, every time i write a disk or click on the disk it goes to the windows document folder instead of the FLOPPY000 folder. Is this normal? What i get from this, is that it's not uploading properlyu the files. Thanks!
Not sure if you ever figured this out, but you have to run the executable file for the GoTek software as admin (right click, choose run as admin). It didn't matter where I installed the software either, I still had to do this.
Have you had any incompatibility with USB sticks? I had one working, formatted another from within the software, disks open fine but when going to write them, I get a "path not found" type error.
This is exactly what mine are doing. They appear to format perfectly, but when I'm going through the video and imitating things on my end, I get the exact "the system cannot find the path specified" error when trying to access 1 of the 100 'disks'...
Just a question Phil. I have successfully flashed my Gotek emulator. I will be using it in my Roland G-800 synthe keyboard so do I need to install any other programmes into my Gotek for it to work in the keyboard? (any additional firmware or software)? Utube user Cellelar goes through the process of flashing the Gotek and I did do the steps, but when he started talking about Amigas and Atari's I paused as I am preparing my Gotek to go into my Roland. Another video on Utube goes through programming the Gotek for use in keyboards rather than Amigas or computers. (Bangers and Chumley-Take the Fear out of the Gear) is what their Utube site is called. I am just not sure if I need to do what they are outlining or if it has already been done? Thanks!
Great video, thank you! There remain a few open questions, though. 100 floppy images will take up about 144MB space on the USB drive. What about the space left? Can it be used in windows? What file system is on the USB drive after being formatted for the emulator? Can the system somehow handle multiples of 100 floppy disks on one USB drive?
While he showed 100 floppy images, the floppy emulator can do 1,000 (000-999) floppy images on a usb drive. If you have more floppies than that I don't think swapping to another usb drive with another 1,000 floppy images is going to bother you any - you're already well accustomed to swapping 1,000+ floppy diskettes.
That looks great. Though it should have a speaker and play recorded floppy drive sounds, for no other reason than that would be awesome. I threw away literally 20 or 30 floppy drives because I had no idea which ones worked, which ones eat disks, etc. They did not age well at all, in my experience.
+uzimonkey There is a hack going around with a custom firmware so that the GOTEK works with the Amiga. And I saw there are version with a speaker :D I don't know if this is also possible for PC usage, would be neat though.
sorry for reviwing a really old video comment section :) I was wondering how that would work with diskcopy command. what would happen if we have a physical floppy drive A and gotek as drive B. then run the command "diskcopy A: B:"? Would that create an image or copy files into the USB drive? (I think I better get a dual floppy ribbon cable and test that, I'm curious haha)
i couldnt figure out why batch manage tool v1.40, was giving me this error "the system cannot find the path specified". found out that only happens if you try to use floppy disk number 000, if you use any other floppy disc, the error doesnt happen. i hope this saves some frustrations for anyone else.
This item is fantastic for retro gaming machines. Meanwhile i've bought 6 of them for my retro-systems, and all of them works without any issues. To bad that the software don't run under windows 98😪
I've got one in my Rohde & Schwarz UPL 16. But I haven't figured out how to properly prepare the USB stick. I can format the drive in the UPL with DOS 6.22, but when I write to it, it tells me there's not enough space. When I load the stick on a Windows PC, it's blank.. more work to do to make this usable.
Hi Phil, this is a great video that has got me considering one of these for a 98/XP time machine I'm putting together. From the ebay listings I note they only reference support as far back as XP. Have you tried it with 98 at all? Does it play ball and see the formatted flash drive as floppies straight off the bat? Thanks
It IS like a real floppy drive. So it doesn't matter the OS, but to calm your nerves, I've used it in DOS and 98 of course, but also with the BIOS to boot and flash and so on.
Phil - You missed a step as you installed on top of an existing installation. When you changed the software location from C:\programme files.... to C:\USB Floppy Emulator V2 the file directories are not created so "Open" file fails. You need to use "Option/Set" (ctl-Q) and the loctation of the DISK and DISKBAK folders have to be amended as well.
Formatting goes fine, but when I try to open up a floppy image, it opens Documents and doesn't redirect me to the correct path, so I can't access any of the floppy image files. Any ideas on how I could fix that?
Never mind Phil I figured it out. Need to use RawWrite for windows or similar program. I'm 65 and haven't messed with floppies for nearly 20 yrs. Even though I have over 50 old computers including 2 Amiga 500's with about 500 disks and a 1084S monitor that I bought at a hamfest for $100.00 US both working BTW. I'm retired now and want to go back to playing with this old stuff. My first computer was a KIM-1 wish I still had it. I'm working on making video's but it sure is time consuming. Thanks Lawrence
Thanks for the vid mate. I recently got a Yamaha rm1x groove box with an old gotek usb drive like that. I can’t get it to save music projects to it. Does it need to be formatted to fat32 specifically, or is my usb capacity possibly too large?
Great video Phil. That software looks WAY more user friendly than the Gotek provided utility. Have you tried to format a USB stick for 1000 images? You have the model which is supposed to handle that many so I was wondering if you had encountered any issues going that big. Thanks
What happened too ipcas GmbH. That company seems too be totally closed now and the web-side don't exist anymore. Good thing you did a backup of that driver/software before it was too late :)
Hi Phil, Thankyou for the great video. I have just bought my first Gotek off ebay (SFRC922D ver 2.14 firmware) I have followed your video instructions and all seems ok, until i get to running the USB stick on the Gotek in DOS 6.22, all i'm getting is the E34 error code on the gotek screen. any help/advise would be greatly appreciated, many thanks
I followed your software install instructions exactly (several times) but could not open any of the floppy images (Windows10). Finally by clicking the folder item on the menu bar I discovered that the directory still points to the c\ Program files etc..etc. In short if you change the directory as show in this video you also need to change it via the folder icon on the batch manager toolbar. Other than that super vid and thanks for the link, by the way the Amazon purchased unit could not even load cd tried several pcs
Wanted to let you know that your video helped me a lot. One question I have that I don't know if you can answer is how do I save a file to the USB floppy if the unit is not in a computer? Mine is in a piano and when I save to the disk I don't know how to save it so I can see it.
I'd like to have one on my Roland XP80, only question is - if all internal electronic components can withstand that high read/write speed and not burn out
I've had my eye on one of these for a few years now, but haven't gotten one yet. But it has led me to a thought. Why don't we see any see any ATA optical drive emulators on the market? I know it's easy to mount an image in modern operating systems, but an ODD emulator would be very beneficial to DoS based systems. It would be nice to be have the convenience of swapping between images on the fly and not having those slow access times, eliminating the need for maitence and CDs being scuffed and scratched. It would also by nice if it had an internal 3.5" S/ATA enclosure in addition to a USB port. And a nice little backlit dot matrix LCD to see the CD labels and some other information. Of course an MPC2 port would be a must. Optical drive emulators are something that have been proven to be useful addition on game consoles and an IDE would really be a great thing to have in a dedicated DoS PC.
Hi I have a problem, the emulator software that work fine under Windows XP , don´t work under Windows 7 and now I can´t built the 100 units partition on the usb stick, IPCAS SFD GOTEK, both one and the other don´t work; The system send a message that says "the program its imcompatible", You can help me? Thanks
+nullcore2 Nope. I've heard of it, but for what I do I'm happy with the Gotek as it is. I don't have an Amiga or other machines with a different floppy standard.
I can't seem to succeed and I have 2 goteks...one with display and button, the other one whitout those. No idea what I'm doing wrong, I've successfully wrote the first 3 slots in the USB stick through the floppy emulator software (tried dos 6, dos 3), but when I plug the gotek in the pc (through an external case) the leds light up but i get "boot failure"
Hello Phil. Thanks for you video. I am trying to load midi files on the USB to be played on my Yamaha Keyboard. I watch your video very closely on how to load files on floppy000 and everytime I save it, I keep getting errors. Am I doing something wrong? TIA
do you mean hexadecimal? You're going to need a separate chip to actually read the disk into ASCI text. You're "Gotek" would end up being a more powerful computer that the retro computer you intend to use. Maybe you want a Raspberry Pi to read the virtual disks?
So I had a look at Ebay for one of these, but I found dozens of varations. Including one for "Embroidery Machine". What is the difference between all of these, which one should I get. I have a '99 Pentium 3 and am looking for a replacement for the floppy drive (the one I got is unreliable).
I'd be curios if you've tried the SD HxC rev F at all and if so what your thoughts are. It seems it would look a bit nicer on the front of the computer to me.
hi Phil thanks for this great tutorial.. I could use your help a little bit.. whenever I click save on the image it says that it cannot find the specified file and all of a sudden the file i copied is vanished.. cannot seem to figure out what i am missing despite following your video? any idea what I could be doing wrong thanks
Hxc firmware does amiga and atari as well as a load of others but costs about £10 i think, or if it's just for Amiga the cortex free firmware will be just fine.
Many thanks for this Phil. I have managed to do all what I wanted to do with the floppy emulator, so that's great. However I can only get floppy 00 to load data into and it would be nice to be able to access the other partitions. I assume I'm doing something wrong but cant find out what I'm not doing, even though I have watched your video many times. The batch opening option is greyed out, and when I try to open a partition, for some reason this initially opens the My Documents file. Any guidance would be most welcome.
I've ordered one of these (from AliExpress) for my Roland W30 sampler workstation. Does anyone have any information about what jumper settings to use, and any special installation/setup procedures???
However, to overcome the 'only 99 files' handicap, yesterday I installed Keir Fraser's FlashFloppy firmware. Very quick, simple and easy to do with a USB A-A cable and 100% recommended. Number of files only limited by capacity of your stick. It also supports folders, but to make use of that you need to further mod with an OLED display and rotary encoder. Vid on YT about that. For further info and my How To document, visit the FF Wiki.
Is there a way to leave the USB flash drive in, and boot the PC as if a floppy disk was not inserted? It would be nice to not have to remove the drive. I do understand that "having a disk in a floppy drive" was how they originally worked with boot priority settings. I just want to select a different number or something rather than physically remove the drive every time.
I have put the jumpers where required. I have done the format of a 1GB stick and have 100 floppies showing in the software. Roland xp50 still says unformatted disk if you try to do anything with it. I have not done the link between pins 1+2 which I saw on a video where someone installed into a G800. Any clues?
**IMPORTANT IF USING WINDOWS 10** When you open each "disk", it will not show the name, ie. h:/001. So you need to set the programs compatibility to Windows 7 and set to Administrator. Then it should work fine!
Gotek floppy emulators have evolved a lot since this video was made, the latest revisions now come with an integrated little OLED display and a rotary dial which makes image selection super-easy. Costs a bit more, but totally worth it. Moreover, you don't need any special software to manage your floppy disk images any more with the recent versions of FlashFloppy firmware (I used v3.14a which is a stable beta build). Just get a USB flashdrive, something small so as not to waste storage, format it as FAT32, chuck as many bootable floppy disk images on it as you want and insert into the Gotek. You don't need to worry about file naming and folder arrangements. Choose the image you want with the rotary dial, the OLED screen will show you the filename for easy identification and that's it, it just works. Couldn't be simpler. I've tested on my vintage Compaq PC Pentium III machine using MS-DOS 6.22, Windows 98SE, OPENSTEP 4.2 for Mach, BeOS 5.03 and various bootable Linux floppies and it works flawlessly. You can configure for other systems through jumpers and the FlashFloppy config file, but the defaults are optimal for use on an IBM PC.
The tiny OLED screen even warns you if you plug in the floppy cable in the wrong orientation! That's actually really helpful.
AFAIK no they don't. That's a mod from the community :) So if you buy such a unit, someone has modified it and makes a profit :)
@@philscomputerlab Yes, of course, and so they should for extending functionality to such a vastly more usable level.
Just a little tip for those having trouble flashing their Gotek, I was using my Windows 10, went through all the steps, kept coming up Gotek not found, undetected etc, so i tried various USB to USB cords, still no luck, then tried a Mac USB to USB, (female to male), and Wala..my Gotek is now flashed successfully, go figure! Thanks for this great video Phil...
needing one of these for work and wanted a tutorial. first video I see is Phil again. Awesome stuff
This seems like a great idea. I'll probably be looking at picking one up at some point. I feel like the best way to keep up with which floppies on are a given usb drive is to keep a simple .txt file on the very first floppy, and just keep a nice running list of what's on the rest of the drive.
Great tip! Just make the first floppy dos bootable with edit.com + qbasic.com/exe and editing is right at your fingertips too.
You have no idea how helpful your videos are. My cousin dug out his old AST Adventure and we got it working, and the bug bit me so I salvaged some old parts from my girlfriend's dad's basement and got my own DOS rig going in a noisy old office machine. Now I'm on my way to building one from the ground up.
I have had an old inop 486 for decades, thinking that someday I would get it running again. This week into my lap fell an additional THREE 486 computers that have various problems. Thanks to your videos, website full of data and resources, and some ebay purchases, I hope to be getting three of the four back in action. I'm pretty sure the mobo is dead on one of them.
Anyway, thanks for doing what you do! MUCH appreciated!
+James Hanna That's awesome, thanks for sharing :D
Just got one! Can’t wait to set it up with floppies for booting/installing software on thin clients that I am mucking about with. Thanks as always!
By the way, as a general rule on disk drives, pin 1 is always on the side with the power connector. You can look on the PCB for Pin 1, but that's a LOT of work especially if the drive's already in the system :)
I use one of these in an old Haas CNC machine and I could never figure out how to access more than just the first virtual floppy until I watched your video. Thank you!
Looked at this video for a tutorial on using a floppy emulator. This was a demonstration of how much you know about it and was very much over the heads of anyone looking for simple direction.
Hey Phil; Thanks so much for your content. It has been very helpful in putting a couple of retro systems together. I purchased a GoTek and had all the same problems with Windows 10 and V2 of the USB Floppy Emulator software. Installing on XP did the trick and works as you describe. I did install on a root directory and pointed the backup and disk directories there. Thanks again.
Thank you Phil for providing the software download that can't be found anywhere else. VERY much appreciated.
And thanks again phil! Got the gotek emulator going... i was being clueless on how to make this work
Thanks, the damn software is the only reason this thing has been sitting in a drawer for 2 years. Could never get it to work. Wanted to try it tonight again since my 386's floppy drive finally failed. Thanks for linking that other software! Worked great.
I am using a GOTEK and the instructions came in chinese. Thank you for this installation file in english. much appreciated.
Thanks for tutorial and heads up. Got one recently and works great. No more clunky drives and dodgy discs to worry about.
Awesome :D
Got me rolling on this 486SX. My eternal thanks. It's been a long road getting this industrial unit up on all four legs.
Hey everyone i seen on another video,you can format your usb drive on system start up with usb drive in the its port,hold the 2 button on the right in friont at the same time & it will format the drive without any software!! Hope that helps! Um im ordering like 3 asap!
You made one of the best explanation for this flappy drive
As a retro computer owner these are indispensable! You have to have one nowadays if your going to own or collect a retro computer especially if your running the older operating systems.
A Gotek is a very good solution to replace any floppy drive. I bought recently a such drive, but mine doesn't have the ST MCU inside, there is an Artery Microcontroller inside, that's important if you plan to flash an alternative firmware to it. I flashed the FlashFloppy firmware on that device. You need only a paper clip and an USB A-to-A cable, then u can expand the possibilities of the drive and you'll can get rid of the management software, so u can put the image files directly on the usb drive, u can optional install an OLED display in the drive, so u can put your images even on Linux to the USB drive. ;)
Thanks Phil, I just used this on my Super Socket 7 retro PC and it worked great!
Thanks for the nice manual, works great!
Biggest USB size the program can recognize is about 4GB (with my 8GB stick it shows 3,42GB), but doesn't matter because 100 floppys only need about 150mb.
The first disk ist available in the windows explorer as removable flash drive :) (so it can be written very easy without the program)
+Fire Phoenix That's good to hear!
Picked up one of these for my retro DOS machine last month and haven't been able to get this to work properly. I keep getting general read errors when trying to read from a USB stick in Win98/DOS. Sometimes it will show the directories in DOS, but will not format, read or write. I'm using the software Phil mentioned to format the USB.
EDIT : I'm an idiot, my floppy cable was plugged in incorrectly on both sides 😂
we all been there ! 😂
Yep got that t-shirt too mate
I had the same issue. Thought I had a bad mobo at first.
excellent video, very clear. If only all youtube vids were this easy to follow!
I highly recommend Folder Axe for use w the Gotek, it generates sub-folders (subdirectories, whatever) from a single folder and it’ll do it by size, say 1mb or 720kb, which makes loading files to the Gotek a breeze! Worked magic on all my Sierra GOG downloads and now they’re ready for use on my 486 :)
excellent amount of effort going into each of your video's, nice bit of tech!
THE RED LINE ON THE CABLE MEANS SOMETHING!!????!!! Great Scott!
Another super helpful video, just finally got around to buying one of these after having my 1000th or so non readable floppy. The gotek is awesome, and the recommended software in this video is as well.
Awesome :D
Thank you Phil for the great tutorial. It saved me . All the best.
Great vid Phil, thanks for making it. The process is more involved than I was expecting, but I guess it makes sense to require software to manage the special formatting.
It's much simpler if you get two GOTEKs. One internal one (this one), and another external one (white model, has a USB port at the back). Then you basically have an internal Floppy and a USB Floppy drive and you can easily transfer files between old and new without software.
@@philscomputerlab great idea there! Thanks for the tip. :)
The software available for these Gotek emulators is pretty hopeless, particularly for writing to slots 100+. After reading a blog post about directly editing the usb stick image, I made some windows batch files to automate the process. Now all you need to do is open the ones in WinImage you want to change, and write them back to the stick when you're finished. Here are the scripts for anyone interested: github.com/xtcrefugee/gotek-usb-batch-files
The software crashes EVERY time I try to write a floppy image to it. Kinda pissing me off because it use to work just fine at one point.
Good luck ordering these from China. I ordered two Gotek floppy emulators from merchants (and these were given good reviews by other Roland Sampler users and both times they got lost in the mail.
I'm not sure why it doesn't occur to them that their customers might actually WANT to pay a little extra for trackable and insured parcels.
I went with the HxC option from Lotherek and it went without a hitch.
Is there any setting about jumper for my Roland g800...?
Thank you so much for explaining how to use this! When I bought mine online, the documentation (or lack of) and the shitty software it came with made the prospect of using it more of a pain than a help.
I just purchased one, and when I went to test it in my SS7 PC I kept getting a "Floppy Drive(s) fail" error. It turns out that you cannot run them on the same floppy channel as another drive (in this case, I have a 5.25" Floppy drive as the B device). DS1 Jumper was set.
Of course, having one kind of negates the need for the real drives, but it would allow more flexibility.
Regardless, Phil, I'm pretty sure my wife should despise you. You've compelled me into getting a fair amount of gear lately. SS7 era stuff and MIDI modules. Great videos, and great information!
Haha :) Now regarding two drives, I did use the GOTEK with another, real, 1.4 MB drive in the same machine and it worked fine. The BIOS must support two drives and you need a cable that supports two, most these days just support a single drive.
Interesting. I have it on a FIC PA-2013 SS7, and I normally use a 3.5" and 5.25" drive on the same cable and channel. I only swapped the 3.5" for the Gotek. Once I disconnected the 5.25" drive, it was able to detect and operate the emulator.
😂
Hi Phil, This may be of some interest to you. I was able to get a Kingston 2g Micro SD card to work in one of the USB pen type Flash card readers. Now I do not have to tie up one of my 64g PNYs. I'm doing a retro multi boot build using CF cards and Micro SDs as my HDDs. I have it running DOS/3.11/98/200Pro/XP on cards. Win 7 is the main O/S on a SSD. Having this now working on one of the 2g Micro cards, fits right in with the theme. Thank you again for pointing out the USB compatibility issue. It was the key I needed.
It looks like 4gigs is the largest this program can recognize. At least this was the case for me. Great content as always!
Thx alot for doing these videos. Been looking forward for this one!
Wish i had this when i was messing with my old compaq deskpro xl as it doesnt have the software to change bios settings on the motherboard but on harddriver or 3 floppy. Lucky for me i notist this After i had formated the drive on it... fun time to find those files And geting them to 3 floppys that worked.
Keep up the great work!
Many thanks for the video, I have grabbed one to replace the failed floppy in my 386dx40. As an aside, The jumpers can be used for device address setting. I have seen the unit used in an Amiga and the jumpers marked s0 and s1 are used to select df0 and df1. PC uses twisted cable to set drive a: or b:Chris
+Chris Hogan Ah, good to know, thanks :)
nice video, thanks Phil! got my GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator today and it works flawlessly :)
I got a hold of a Compaq Deskpro 286e, my first PC that I got in 1994.
This will be a really useful piece of kit.
Very good tutorial, Thanks so much for doing this.
Installed one on my yamaha PSR-540. Great thing you kept the software available, since the website of the German company no longer exists (maybe a good idea to remove the link from your website ;-)). On my Win 10 machine, I had some issues with the software. Apparently, Win10 does not like it to put data in the Program Files directory. Everything started working as soon as I dedicated a different folder for saving the data.
Too bad, it only emulates up to 100 floppies. Today, a USB stick would easily be capable to emulate a lot more, which would be convenient.
Thank you Sir that was so helpful. Now I can save the midi files I compose on my Roland E-500 without problems. The disappearance of floppy drive (and floppy disk) was a bad dream for many musicians having old keyboard models. But that floppy emulator with that software saved the situation. Fast advance of technology !!!
Hi there..I'm a big fan of the Roland E-500, can you please get someone who can sell it to me?
you can just email me...PLEASE..
Dude, is there any setting about its jumper for my Roland g800. I still don't recognize how to use that jumper because my Roland g800 don't recognize USB flash disk even I have format it to floppi. Help please
@@nangosoda Sorry for being late to respond. Jumper settings are not the same for all Roland models. Roland agent told me that it didn't work at all with some models. Hopefully your g800 is not one of these. Anyway you have to try all probabilities you may have in your jumper socket until you find the right one. That's what I did. Just be patient and try them all. You may be lucky to find the right combination from the first few trials. Good luck my friend.
@@musadube1239 Unfortunately I know only one person who still has the E-500 but it's not in good conditions. I'm so sorry for being late to respond. Just saw the message today. Please forgive me.
Very good review! I have been wanting one of these for my Amiga 1200 for a while (I know it needs modified firmware), but for now, I'll just stick to buying one for the good old Pentium 200MHz :)
just Picked one up Phil, excited to put it to good use.
Thank you for making this video. I was struggling on how to use this device.
These look so cool. The use of them going forward maybe not too much as the older stuff becomes non existent. I'd love to still have some of the older hardware still available to me.
Keep up the good work. Always looking forward to your next video.
Thanks :)
Didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw the keygen included with the software on CD. Fortunately the hardware is solid.
your video saved me a lot of time and headache. thanks
6:25 & 6:45 I can get to. But at 7:03 when I try to click on 'open', it gives me an error (no matter which number I try & this is my 4th USB key I've tried) - "Batch Manage Tool" error of "The system cannot find the path specified." Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Thanks a million for the links, the walk thru, etc!! I'd have been lost!
Hi! From the start, let me thank you for all the content that you make! it´s awesome and made my time at home during this pandemic a lot more interesting. I've bought one gotek drive and after formating the usb stick (32gb) in the batch manage tool 1.40, every time i write a disk or click on the disk it goes to the windows document folder instead of the FLOPPY000 folder. Is this normal? What i get from this, is that it's not uploading properlyu the files. Thanks!
Not sure if you ever figured this out, but you have to run the executable file for the GoTek software as admin (right click, choose run as admin). It didn't matter where I installed the software either, I still had to do this.
Have you had any incompatibility with USB sticks? I had one working, formatted another from within the software, disks open fine but when going to write them, I get a "path not found" type error.
This is exactly what mine are doing. They appear to format perfectly, but when I'm going through the video and imitating things on my end, I get the exact "the system cannot find the path specified" error when trying to access 1 of the 100 'disks'...
Just a question Phil. I have successfully flashed my Gotek emulator. I will be using it in my Roland G-800 synthe keyboard so do I need to install any other programmes into my Gotek for it to work in the keyboard? (any additional firmware or software)? Utube user Cellelar goes through the process of flashing the Gotek and I did do the steps, but when he started talking about Amigas and Atari's I paused as I am preparing my Gotek to go into my Roland. Another video on Utube goes through programming the Gotek for use in keyboards rather than Amigas or computers. (Bangers and Chumley-Take the Fear out of the Gear) is what their Utube site is called. I am just not sure if I need to do what they are outlining or if it has already been done? Thanks!
Thank you for your tutorial! It helped me a lot. :)
thanks Phil awesome its working great.
Great video, thank you! There remain a few open questions, though. 100 floppy images will take up about 144MB space on the USB drive. What about the space left? Can it be used in windows? What file system is on the USB drive after being formatted for the emulator? Can the system somehow handle multiples of 100 floppy disks on one USB drive?
While he showed 100 floppy images, the floppy emulator can do 1,000 (000-999) floppy images on a usb drive. If you have more floppies than that I don't think swapping to another usb drive with another 1,000 floppy images is going to bother you any - you're already well accustomed to swapping 1,000+ floppy diskettes.
That looks great. Though it should have a speaker and play recorded floppy drive sounds, for no other reason than that would be awesome. I threw away literally 20 or 30 floppy drives because I had no idea which ones worked, which ones eat disks, etc. They did not age well at all, in my experience.
+uzimonkey There is a hack going around with a custom firmware so that the GOTEK works with the Amiga. And I saw there are version with a speaker :D I don't know if this is also possible for PC usage, would be neat though.
sorry for reviwing a really old video comment section :) I was wondering how that would work with diskcopy command. what would happen if we have a physical floppy drive A and gotek as drive B. then run the command "diskcopy A: B:"? Would that create an image or copy files into the USB drive? (I think I better get a dual floppy ribbon cable and test that, I'm curious haha)
hi Phil, how did you capture the boot screen and those DOS screens seamlessly? What capture device were you using?
Thankyou! Now if you have any ideas on custom bigger partition sizes that would be great!
i couldnt figure out why batch manage tool v1.40, was giving me this error "the system cannot find the path specified". found out that only happens if you try to use floppy disk number 000, if you use any other floppy disc, the error doesnt happen. i hope this saves some frustrations for anyone else.
This item is fantastic for retro gaming machines. Meanwhile i've bought 6 of them for my retro-systems, and all of them works without any issues. To bad that the software don't run under windows 98😪
I've got one in my Rohde & Schwarz UPL 16. But I haven't figured out how to properly prepare the USB stick. I can format the drive in the UPL with DOS 6.22, but when I write to it, it tells me there's not enough space. When I load the stick on a Windows PC, it's blank.. more work to do to make this usable.
Hi Phil, this is a great video that has got me considering one of these for a 98/XP time machine I'm putting together. From the ebay listings I note they only reference support as far back as XP. Have you tried it with 98 at all? Does it play ball and see the formatted flash drive as floppies straight off the bat? Thanks
It IS like a real floppy drive. So it doesn't matter the OS, but to calm your nerves, I've used it in DOS and 98 of course, but also with the BIOS to boot and flash and so on.
PhilsComputerLab Thanks! Looks like I'll be filling that second 3.5 inch bay :)
Phil - You missed a step as you installed on top of an existing installation. When you changed the software location from C:\programme files.... to C:\USB Floppy Emulator V2 the file directories are not created so "Open" file fails. You need to use "Option/Set" (ctl-Q) and the loctation of the DISK and DISKBAK folders have to be amended as well.
Formatting goes fine, but when I try to open up a floppy image, it opens Documents and doesn't redirect me to the correct path, so I can't access any of the floppy image files. Any ideas on how I could fix that?
Cheers Phil very useful video. Out of interest if I wanted to use the Gotek on an Amiga do you know if its just a case of changing the jumper setting?
No idea, I work with PCs, not Amiga.
Never mind Phil I figured it out. Need to use RawWrite for windows or similar program. I'm 65 and haven't messed with floppies for nearly 20 yrs. Even though I have over 50 old computers including 2 Amiga 500's with about 500 disks and a 1084S monitor that I bought at a hamfest for $100.00 US both working BTW. I'm retired now and want to go back to playing with this old stuff. My first computer was a KIM-1 wish I still had it. I'm working on making video's but it sure is time consuming. Thanks Lawrence
It's a fun hobby, I can see myself retiring right now and doing this for the rest of my life :D
Imagine on a CP/M you could have an utility that controls the pushbuttons via GPIO - that would be like having a hard-disk!
if I open up a floppy disk, it goes into my documents folder but not the folder its supposed to go to ...
Same. Did you ever get it to work? If so, how??
@@russkramer7196 Yes. Open the floppy manager as administrator then it opens the correct folder when you doubleclick on the images.
Thanks for the vid mate. I recently got a Yamaha rm1x groove box with an old gotek usb drive like that. I can’t get it to save music projects to it. Does it need to be formatted to fat32 specifically, or is my usb capacity possibly too large?
Hold down both buttons. Power on device and it will format the USB.
Great video Phil. That software looks WAY more user friendly than the Gotek provided utility. Have you tried to format a USB stick for 1000 images? You have the model which is supposed to handle that many so I was wondering if you had encountered any issues going that big. Thanks
I was able to format 1000 images by pressing the two buttons and turning the PC on. BUT the software wouldn't work with it.
Any news on this topic? Any new softwares?
What happened too ipcas GmbH. That company seems too be totally closed now and the web-side don't exist anymore. Good thing you did a backup of that driver/software before it was too late :)
Hi Phil, Thankyou for the great video. I have just bought my first Gotek off ebay (SFRC922D ver 2.14 firmware) I have followed your video instructions and all seems ok, until i get to running the USB stick on the Gotek in DOS 6.22, all i'm getting is the E34 error code on the gotek screen. any help/advise would be greatly appreciated, many thanks
Hi Phil, Any chance you've got the software for a mac?
I followed your software install instructions exactly (several times) but could not open any of the floppy images (Windows10). Finally by clicking the folder item on the menu bar I discovered that the directory still points to the c\ Program files etc..etc. In short if you change the directory as show in this video you also need to change it via the folder icon on the batch manager toolbar. Other than that super vid and thanks for the link, by the way the Amazon purchased unit could not even load cd tried several pcs
Thanks for the information! I've since got an external GOTEK (plugs into USB), and use this on my modern PC.
Great instructions. I was stuck installing it on my mpc 2000 but this got me through.
Wanted to let you know that your video helped me a lot. One question I have that I don't know if you can answer is how do I save a file to the USB floppy if the unit is not in a computer? Mine is in a piano and when I save to the disk I don't know how to save it so I can see it.
I just got the OLED variant. Excellent so far! What is the max size usb flash drive I can use for the Gotek? I cant seem to find that information.
Any idea how to set it up to be used together with an existing 3.5 inch drive? As in drive A:\ and B:\
Thank you soooo much
Can i use this one on my korg classic ?
and what about widows software, can i run it on windows 10 ?
It does run on Windows 10, it's like a standard floppy drive. Not sure about whatever Korg Classic is, but they are cheap enough to take a gamble.
@@philscomputerlab Thank you Phils for you fast response :)
I'd like to have one on my Roland XP80, only question is -
if all internal electronic components can withstand that high read/write speed and not burn out
That doesn't make any sense. They will only read and write as fast as they are designed to.
I've had my eye on one of these for a few years now, but haven't gotten one yet. But it has led me to a thought. Why don't we see any see any ATA optical drive emulators on the market?
I know it's easy to mount an image in modern operating systems, but an ODD emulator would be very beneficial to DoS based systems.
It would be nice to be have the convenience of swapping between images on the fly and not having those slow access times, eliminating the need for maitence and CDs being scuffed and scratched. It would also by nice if it had an internal 3.5" S/ATA enclosure in addition to a USB port. And a nice little backlit dot matrix LCD to see the CD labels and some other information. Of course an MPC2 port would be a must.
Optical drive emulators are something that have been proven to be useful addition on game consoles and an IDE would really be a great thing to have in a dedicated DoS PC.
+Eric McTrainshit I'm so hoping for someone to make an optical drive emulator! The time is ripe, optical media isn't going to be around for long.
Hi I have a problem, the emulator software that work fine under Windows XP , don´t work under Windows 7 and now I can´t built the 100 units partition on the usb stick, IPCAS SFD GOTEK, both one and the other don´t work; The system send a message that says "the program its imcompatible", You can help me? Thanks
+PhilsComputerLab , have you made some experience with running the Firmware from HxC2001 for the Gotek hardware instead of the original Gotek one?
+nullcore2 Nope. I've heard of it, but for what I do I'm happy with the Gotek as it is. I don't have an Amiga or other machines with a different floppy standard.
this is ecaxtly what i need for my old Akai S2000 sampler - Thanx a buch for this video ,- :-)
I can't seem to succeed and I have 2 goteks...one with display and button, the other one whitout those. No idea what I'm doing wrong, I've successfully wrote the first 3 slots in the USB stick through the floppy emulator software (tried dos 6, dos 3), but when I plug the gotek in the pc (through an external case) the leds light up but i get "boot failure"
Hello Phil. Thanks for you video. I am trying to load midi files on the USB to be played on my Yamaha Keyboard. I watch your video very closely on how to load files on floppy000 and everytime I save it, I keep getting errors. Am I doing something wrong? TIA
This thing is great. I'm going to try to install a better OLED display so it actually shows the floppy disk contents instead of just a number.
do you mean hexadecimal? You're going to need a separate chip to actually read the disk into ASCI text. You're "Gotek" would end up being a more powerful computer that the retro computer you intend to use. Maybe you want a Raspberry Pi to read the virtual disks?
So I had a look at Ebay for one of these, but I found dozens of varations. Including one for "Embroidery Machine". What is the difference between all of these, which one should I get. I have a '99 Pentium 3 and am looking for a replacement for the floppy drive (the one I got is unreliable).
I'd be curios if you've tried the SD HxC rev F at all and if so what your thoughts are. It seems it would look a bit nicer on the front of the computer to me.
I'm 100% satisfied with the GOTEK! I have 5 or so now in use, plus one special one with USB port (external Floppy).
Guessing that means you won't be trying the HxC any time soon?
hi Phil thanks for this great tutorial.. I could use your help a little bit.. whenever I click save on the image it says that it cannot find the specified file and all of a sudden the file i copied is vanished.. cannot seem to figure out what i am missing despite following your video? any idea what I could be doing wrong thanks
What are your thoughts of if this could be made to work in an Amiga or Atari ST?
Not sure, I do videos mostly around the PC :)
They do work with Amigas. You have to re-program the emulator but it's pretty easy. Search for Cortex Amiga Floppy Emulator.
Hxc firmware does amiga and atari as well as a load of others but costs about £10 i think, or if it's just for Amiga the cortex free firmware will be just fine.
Many thanks for this Phil. I have managed to do all what I wanted to do with the floppy emulator, so that's great. However I can only get floppy 00 to load data into and it would be nice to be able to access the other partitions. I assume I'm doing something wrong but cant find out what I'm not doing, even though I have watched your video many times. The batch opening option is greyed out, and when I try to open a partition, for some reason this initially opens the My Documents file. Any guidance would be most welcome.
The windows software only works if you format the USB from the windows tool I believe. Also run it in admin mode.
Thanks Phil. I did format the usb exactly as you did in the video, assume that was correct?@@philscomputerlab
@@kevanbarrett7411 Use the software to formats not by holding down the buttons. The video is years ago, the details escape me 😅
I've ordered one of these (from AliExpress) for my Roland W30 sampler workstation. Does anyone have any information about what jumper settings to use, and any special installation/setup procedures???
i also would like to know about the jumper settings
@@Rigidity11 If you use the standard Gotek firmware, my SFRM72-FU-DL came with jumpers at S0 and JA and worked fine out of the box with my W30.
However, to overcome the 'only 99 files' handicap, yesterday I installed Keir Fraser's FlashFloppy firmware. Very quick, simple and easy to do with a USB A-A cable and 100% recommended. Number of files only limited by capacity of your stick. It also supports folders, but to make use of that you need to further mod with an OLED display and rotary encoder. Vid on YT about that. For further info and my How To document, visit the FF Wiki.
But you might need to remove the JA jumper for FlashFloppy to work. Hope that helps.
Don't buy a Gotek from AliExpress, you can buy the same thing from eBay for about half the price....
Is there a way to leave the USB flash drive in, and boot the PC as if a floppy disk was not inserted? It would be nice to not have to remove the drive. I do understand that "having a disk in a floppy drive" was how they originally worked with boot priority settings. I just want to select a different number or something rather than physically remove the drive every time.
With the stock firmware this isn't doable. You could change the BIOS boot order. As an alternative consider Flash Floppy firmware.
@@philscomputerlab Ah! I will look for such a thing. Unless you advise where to look. Thank you kindly.
I have put the jumpers where required. I have done the format of a 1GB stick and have 100 floppies showing in the software. Roland xp50 still says unformatted disk if you try to do anything with it. I have not done the link between pins 1+2 which I saw on a video where someone installed into a G800. Any clues?