Installing A GoTek Floppy Drive Emulator - How To Tutorial

[@RetroHitch]

Useless!

[@RetroTechChris]

Gee, thanks. So glad you stopped by. I'll be sure to issue a full refund. And I bet you are fun at parties.

[@RetroTechChris]

Also going to pin this comment. I'd also like to apologize to the community: apparently this is one of many "useless" tutorials I have made, and I want the community to be aware. I am terribly sorry to have wasted everyone's time with such a fruitless endeavor. I hope the community will forgive me.

[@Witchling86]

@@RetroTechChris This type of video was exactly what i wanted to watch when i searched "Gotek Floppy Disk" on youtube. :)

[@RetroTechChris]

@@Witchling86 occasionally I get it right!! Thanks for your kind words.

[@RetroTechChris]

@RetroHitch take note, this is how its done :)

[@ted-b]

Nice one Chris. Such a neat solution as all the floppies slowly degrade.

[@RetroTechChris]

These devices are great!

[@airfixer9461]

Nice informative one Chris ;-)

[@RetroTechChris]

Thank you!

[@Mystic-Voyager]

so cool, just ordered one for my new ultimate retro PC build 💪👴

[@RetroTechChris]

Awesome! These are great to have

[@5DiFika]

your videos are awesome, i have been playing with PCs since the 90s , pure DOS and norton commander, and some things are hard to remember, Its amazing what i have been learning from your videos

[@RetroTechChris]

You are too kind! Glad to hear you are enjoying the videos!!

[@vswitchzero]

Great video! These seem like a huge step up from the older gotek drives. I’ll probably pick one up soon. OLED and all the cool functionality aside, I’m so happy to see it comes in a proper beige colour too! The old style beige ones were more of a grey colour.

[@RetroTechChris]

Thank you! Yea... this one matches up perfectly... the perfect beige!

[@bsdjunkie1805]

I recently fitted one to my 386 machine after a few years of deliberating, and yes, I should have done it when I first got the thought as it is super-simple, and my shack isn't the largest, so losing a massive heap of floppies is welcome, plus it has made transfer of programs from the www to my 386 a lot easier

[@RetroTechChris]

They are great devices... and the newer generation is quite the improvement too!

[@procta2343]

neat bit of kit that!

[@RetroTechChris]

It really is!

[@Toxical1234]

Great item. Must install one in my p133

[@RetroTechChris]

Oh yeah, these are great! And definitely plan to load FlashFloppy on one if not already loaded!

[@RetroTechChris]

How many times did I say the word "Gotek"? 🤣

[@RetroTechChris]

@@geekwithsocialskills I'm afraid I did!

[@Lee_Adamson_OCF]

I think that's the same place I got mine from. It's been pretty good. Next time I'm gonna get a cheaper one and try to add the rotary encoder and display myself though, just for fun. :D

[@RetroTechChris]

Oh yeah! That would be a fun project.

[@TheBasementChannel]

Great video! Looks like a nice upgrade. So you can image real floppys straight onto the usb in the gotek?

[@RetroTechChris]

Thanks! Yes, with FlashFloppy loaded, you can do that!

[@OzzFan1000]

That seems pretty handy, though I doubt the Finance Department (i.e. my wife) would allow me to outfit my entire collection of old computers with one of these. :-) I'd be spending at least $800 to do so.

[@RetroTechChris]

Haha! Yea, it could get a little pricy. Maybe there is a way to have an external version!

[@soranblue]

Could you please provide a wiring pinout for the rotary encoder, I have two new goteks but can't get the rotary encoder to work with all the wiring diagrams that I've tried ?

[@RetroTechChris]

I'd suggest reaching out to Retro Friends on KZbin, or see if this is covered in a channel video of theirs.

[@International_Criminal_Court]

Super cool upgrade. So, no more special softwares to *burn* the image files into slots on USB? Simply throwing ima, img, floppy image files inside the stick would be enough?

[@RetroTechChris]

That is correct! The key thing there is having FlashFloppy installed as opposed to the default Gotek software. I think that all Goteks support FlashFloppy too... there are a few different ways to load it depending on the model you have, and, of course, you can press the easy button like I did and order one that is preloaded :)

[@stealth5508]

Hi! Nice video. Does the Gotek require the standard floppy connector (with the twist) or would it work with a normal 34 pin ribbon cable (without twist)?

[@RetroTechChris]

I believe that you could jumper it to work either way, but I haven't tried it. If I can find a non twisted 34 pin ribbon cable, I'll give it a shot sometime later today!

[@stealth5508]

@@RetroTechChris Sure thanks!!

[@RetroTechChris]

@@stealth5508 so here is what I found for my Gotek with FlashFloppy: when connectd with a straight through cable, the drive detected as drive B:. My BIOS has a floppy swap option, so I was able to flip it to A: and boot from it. After resetting the swap option, I moved the Drive Select jumper on the Gotek from Drive Select 1 to Drive Select 0 and it detected as A:, but also "kindof" as B:. I don't think it should have detected as B:, not sure why! I wouldn't recommend this configuration, unless it was an artifact of my FlashFloppy version or Pentium 233 MMX motherboard. You can try it I suppose! Hope that helps.

[@stealth5508]

@@RetroTechChris Thanks for your reply. From what I understand, for a standard floppy connector cable(which has 3 connectors), the twist is to differentiate between drives A: and B:. The drive connected after the twist(usually at the end of the connector) is detected as A: and the drive connected in the middle (without twist) is shown as B:. So I believe here the gotek mimics the regular floppy drive connections.

[@RetroTechChris]

@@stealth5508 that is 100% correct!

[@JimLeonard]

Handy!

[@RetroTechChris]

So true! Great little devices.

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

Cool device

[@RetroTechChris]

They are pretty neat! Thanks for watching!

[@stephenwarnell7003]

My Akai s6000 do not recognize my gotek the jumper is set at s1 is there anything else I can do thanks need help

[@RetroTechChris]

Hmm... not really sure what to offer here, sorry!

[@stephenwarnell7003]

It’s weird when I insert the ribbon cable upside down in the gotek it recognizes it but the display screen on the gotek says ribbon cable may be upside down

[@feliandrofirmansyah1858]

"Can this device (gotek) be loaded with a bootable USB flash drive and selected as the boot device?"

[@RetroTechChris]

@@feliandrofirmansyah1858 unfortunately, no. But you can use it to boot from a bootable floppy image. The Gotek is basically only a floppy drive emulator.

[@feliandrofirmansyah1858]

@@RetroTechChris Thanks ... could you suggest an a device that could emulate usb flash drive to IDE 40 pin HDD/CD PATA and can be connect to older motherboard that has IDE 40 port/connection? So that I can boot from a USB bootable flash drive on an older motherboard that does not support booting from USB, even though it has a USB port.

[@RetroTechChris]

@@feliandrofirmansyah1858 how about using a virtual machine to prep a CF card instead and use that as a HDD? Or use some other form of transfer? I have some ideas here: www.retrotechchris.com/2022/12/27/some-good-resources-for-dos-file-transfer-and-connectivity-from-modern-systems/

[@feliandrofirmansyah1858]

​@@RetroTechChris thanks... 😁

[@silviogonzalez9600]

HELLO, I BUY A GOTEK EMULATOR MODEL SHIFA SFR1M2-FU I CONNECTED IT TO A ZSK EMBROIDERY MACHINE YEAR 91 AND IT DOES NOT READ MY DISKETTES GIVES ME ERROR DISCK -2 SINCE I CANNOT GIVE IT AN EMBROIDERY FORMAT

[@RetroTechChris]

Yea, sadly I wouldn't know much what to do here to assist. Sorry!