GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator Simulator Review Tutorial
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- Опубліковано 19 січ 2015
- One of the best purchases! It solved my issues with flopy disks failing over time.
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**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!
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.
needing one of these for work and wanted a tutorial. first video I see is Phil again. Awesome stuff
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!
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.
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.
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
excellent video, very clear. If only all youtube vids were this easy to follow!
Thanks Phil, I just used this on my Super Socket 7 retro PC and it worked great!
You made one of the best explanation for this flappy drive
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!
Got me rolling on this 486SX. My eternal thanks. It's been a long road getting this industrial unit up on all four legs.
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!
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
Thank you Phil for the great tutorial. It saved me . All the best.
excellent amount of effort going into each of your video's, nice bit of tech!
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.
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. :)
Keep up the good work. Always looking forward to your next video.
Thanks :)
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.
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.
nice video, thanks Phil! got my GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator today and it works flawlessly :)
Thanks for tutorial and heads up. Got one recently and works great. No more clunky drives and dodgy discs to worry about.
Awesome :D
Thank you for your tutorial! It helped me a lot. :)
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.
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
just Picked one up Phil, excited to put it to good use.
Great instructions. I was stuck installing it on my mpc 2000 but this got me through.
Thank you for making this video. I was struggling on how to use this device.
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 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...
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.
I am using a GOTEK and the instructions came in chinese. Thank you for this installation file in english. much appreciated.
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 :)
this is ecaxtly what i need for my old Akai S2000 sampler - Thanx a buch for this video ,- :-)
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!
your video saved me a lot of time and headache. thanks
Thanks for the info, just picked one up
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 :)
Thanks for the help, it works like a dream.
THE RED LINE ON THE CABLE MEANS SOMETHING!!????!!! Great Scott!
thank you for the great tutorial, it save me all lot of time.
Great information Sir.
Thank You
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. ;)
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.
Very Helpful..! Using for Yamaha PSR540 Keyboard.
Thank you very much.
Greetings from Barcelona.
thanks Phil awesome its working great.
merci beaucoup Phil pour ce vidéo !!!
thanks a bunch for this video, i just received mine and it still has the crappy software. this video got me going.
Thank you very much for this!
Didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw the keygen included with the software on CD. Fortunately the hardware is solid.
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.
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 :)
thank u so much. now I'm gonna make some beats on my 2k. many many thanks
Saved my Time thanks so much.
It looks like 4gigs is the largest this program can recognize. At least this was the case for me. Great content as always!
Thanks for your explanation. Very usefull.
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!
Thank you great tutorial !!!
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.
Thankyou! Now if you have any ideas on custom bigger partition sizes that would be great!
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.
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.
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😪
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.
Wonderful tutorial!!I have Roland G800 synthesizer.Do you have a full tutorial how to set it for roland G-800?? (it would be grate.. )
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.
😂
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.
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...?
hi Phil, how did you capture the boot screen and those DOS screens seamlessly? What capture device were you using?
awesome gear!!!!
Thank you very much!
Imagine on a CP/M you could have an utility that controls the pushbuttons via GPIO - that would be like having a hard-disk!
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.
informative my friend
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
Thank you!
well mr phill i got that sorted with just fromat it again in my key board then i put it in my pc it worked fine many thanks
+Mark Smith That's great to hear!
Excellent presentation. I already liked and subscribed to your channel.
I have a Roland VA 76 piano.
It comes standard with a floppy drive and zip drive. I have already replaced the floppy drive with a USB emulator.
I wanted to do the same with the zipdrive 100 IDE.
I want to change the zip100 to something that does the same as the usb emulator. Do you have any advice that can help me? I am grateful for an answer. Cheers.
Great stuff👍
The modern USB floppy drives can have trouble with some disks. I think alot is to do with them being double speed.
what do you mean by floppies being 'double speed'?
He means double density. The disks are different on the recording surface.
Black Terminal No, modern USB floppy drives often run the disk at twice normal speed
ok. i didnt know that
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.
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?
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.
Thanks!
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
Oh my god! i need this!
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.
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?
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.
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.
I have 720k floppies that I drilled out to be able to format to HD (1.44MB) and I copied Windows 3.0 onto it in grade 7 (so, 1993 or such) and to this day they work.
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.
Splendid thing; I want one for my 98 SE computer's resurrection! Does anyone know if the recommended software for this will run happily through 'WINE' or 'PlayOnLinux' on a Debian 9 Linux machine? If not, are there adaptions that will run on 98SE? Those are the only two PC OS's that I've got, and I don't want to buy, much less 'wrongfully acquire' later versions of windows if it can be helped!
Happy Holidays,
Pete
Great video. I'm looking at putting the software emulator with a usb external 3.5 floppy drive on my Win10 pc and the actual emulator in my xp and /or 98Se pcs. Does this seem like a reasonable plan to you? Many thanks.
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!