Supercharge GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator!

FlashFloppy is custom firmware to supercharge your GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator!
FlashFloppy project: github.com/kei...
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[@steevf]

I'm on my 5th Gotek now. 4 of them are the new ones with OLED display. I even upgraded my original 7-segment display one that I upgraded to using flash floppy. I just refuse to use actual floppy disks anymore. :) I have Phil to thank for introducing me to the original Gotek many years ago!

[@philscomputerlab]

Awesome 😎

[@g4z-kb7ct]

0:11 Insert the floppy drive? Eh? ;-) Nice to see you finally caught up with the 80's home computer scene who have been using FF since 2017 ;-)

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

Phil's Computer Lab supercharges my retro PC gaming!

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

He installed a Turbo button?! That was quite nice of him

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

@@JohnSmith-xq1pz He did! Came over to Taipei last week to install it.

[@utubeuser1024]

I love my Goteks - I have a pair of the new ones (both with FlashFloppy) configured as A & B drive on my 486 DOS gaming PC - I have dozens of gaming images and boot images loaded in them - I wired PC speakers to both of mine and love the sound effects. Fun Facts FlashFloppy displays the track and side number of the disk image when loaded - and updates in real time when reading/writing an image And it supports loading 2.88MB disk images too!

[@philscomputerlab]

Ah yes, I didn't mention 2.8 MB. It can really help for example building a super loaded boot disk.

[@GizmoTheGreen]

how do you make it work as drive B? I have failed to find any straightforward answers on the wiki...

[@utubeuser1024]

@@GizmoTheGreen If you're on an IBM PC - make sure both Goteks are jumpered exactly the same (for mine, I only have a single jumper on S1 and nothing else) - then connect your floppy cable - the cable will determine the drive letter the Gotek is assigned by the PC :)

[@GizmoTheGreen]

@@utubeuser1024 one gotek and one regular floppy drive. floppy drive is after the twist. I have s1 jumpered. set B to 3.5 inch in bios but not working, only get "not ready". as the only drive after the twist it works. using latest flashfloppy.

[@ne0ne0]

I never realized I needed this until this video popped up in my KZbin feed.

[@porklaser]

Hell yeah I love flashfloppy! I've been moding and upgrading goteks for some years now. Extremely useful tool. No only for PCs but atari STs or really about anything that has a floppy drive! Atari, TRS80, old synths, old sewing machines.

[@alop53O1]

Old sewing machines had a floppy drive? Ive never seen one of those that’s interesting

[@slaapliedje]

@@alop53O1 Ha, my mother had a sewing machine that had a PCMCIA card slot... they wanted like 80 bucks many years ago for essentially a CF card reader... I bought her one for 20 bucks and got her a CF card and it worked perfectly fine. But yes, they also had some with floppy drives. So did some old musical keyboards.

[@ihsan_lol]

I'm dying to have one of these but for CDs!

[@MortusArtis]

There are USB CD/DVD emulators, haven’t seen one for IDE/ATA though.

[@RetroPcCupboard]

​@@MortusArtisThere is one. The Tattiebogle IDE simulator. I have one. It's expensive and not without issues. I have it in my Pentium MMX DOS time machine. I may do a video on it sometime

[@philscomputerlab]

You and me both!

[@moomah5929]

Hehe, was going to write the same.

[@moomah5929]

@@RetroPcCupboard Yeah, I watched a video from Jeremy's Retro Bar about this one last year and it didn't seem great for the asking price. Of cause the video is also 3 years old, so I don't know how much it improved, if at all.

[@TheOneRobUK]

I've been using this one for 1-2 years. Had no idea it had menus by pressing the spinner haha. Just worked out of the box for me

[@pandacongolais]

Thanks, happy to have found your video. I have 2 Gotek. One recent like yours, with the Artery 435. I already upgraded to FlashFloppy 4.31, but had the display rotated and perhaps missing some lines. I don't remember where I found the FW, but I never found the proper setting to put the display with the correct orientation, and a nice look ! The other one is older, with an Artery 415. So far, it seems half bricked, with another FW (may be an older version of FlashFloppy, can't remember either). After reading the Wiki, I've got hope that I may flash again and give it a second chance !

[@philscomputerlab]

Yup mine was also rotated, so I changed that line in the config file!

[@AARON-K4RNA]

I have several Gotek's. I have seen this model. I am going to put one in a Roland SD-35 Sound Canvas / Midi Player It has a 3.5 Disk drive. This will show the MIDI files on the screen. I love it. You talked me into it now. Watch the prices go up now.

[@EgoShredder]

Get one you will not regret it! I have one in a Yamaha QS300 since 2001, and it makes life so easy to create songs, save to the Gotek and then transfer over to say Steinberg Cubase for working on further and adding guitars and vocals etc. I quite fancy getting one of those Roland MIDI file players, the ones like an 80s ghetto blaster kind of and then putting a Gotek in that. I do not need one but it would be fun to have as a MIDI file stereo for enjoying songs on as I love listening to many of those.

[@adancalderon8915]

Yes it is very cool. I got mine working off of a usb to floppy interface. This allows me to us floppy images on machines that do not have room for an internal floppy drive.

[@philscomputerlab]

Brilliant idea!

[@theol1044]

Great video, thanks! Somebody should make a combined floppy & CD-ROM emulator module (with a separate internal IDE connection for the CD-ROM part), where the USB thumb drive could be used either way. I've always felt that would be the logical next step, after the USB floppy emulators have been on the market for quite a while. Edit: One could also think of two separate USB ports, so emulated floppy & CD-ROM could be used in parallel.

[@philscomputerlab]

That would be cool! The community has been wishing for a CD-ROM emulator and we're still waiting and jealously looking at consoles with SD card optical drive replacements...

[@croquette_fr]

It would even be better if it had a wifi connection that you can use to send images on the fly from a modern computer

[@GizmoTheGreen]

what a coincidence. just got this for my retro PC's yesterday! and I had matching oled and rotary decoder in a drawer. so installed those. flashfloppy is some really neat software. haven't figured out to make it work as drive B: on my "ibm PC" though. only works are drive A:.

[@philscomputerlab]

It's been ages but AFAIK the ribbon cable has some wires changed for the B: drive?

[@AWalYT]

Depends on how new your controller is. The oldest controllers (and most Tandy 1000 models) use the drive select feature of the cable instead of activating the motor and drive lines simultaneously, so you might need to move the jumper between JC (PC Mode), S0 (Shugart Unit 0) or S1 (Shugart Unit 1). My "Dual Drive" modded PCjr only worked with it in the S1 position. If you model doesn't have one or more of these jumpers you can override it using the FF CFG file.

[@g4z-kb7ct]

@@AWalYT The jr isn't a real PC... at least it's not something to compare others against it. The jumper S0-S1 sets it to drive 0 or 1 for shugart interfaces and for a normal PC there's a twist in the cable on a few selected wires and a second connector after the twist. Those floppy cables are common as dirt.

[@66mhzbrain]

Wow, they seem to have come on a lot since I last messed around with them. I need to get one!

[@craigkarsten6719]

Best way to start the day with a coffee and a video from Phil. Thanks for the info.

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks 😊

[@RetroPcCupboard]

I have 3 Goteks with the flashfloppy firmware. One for my DOS/Win95 machine. One for my Win98 machine and one for my WinXP/Win7 PC. They are great. I still like to have a real floppy drive though to allow me to create images of any disks I aquire, and I also have a Sony Camera that uses floppy disks for storing images. It's poor quality images compared to modern cameras but its a bit of fun to use occasionally.

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice! I do remember that camera with floppy drive. Sony did at the time really pushed things and tried all sorts of approaches, what a cool time that was.

[@Yrouel86]

You can also upgrade the models with the 7 segment display with an oled and the 0.96" ones fit without altering the case. The caveat however is that you need to separate the oled proper from the pcb to have the oled visible through the existing case opening and the pcb laying flat inside (with the header pins soldered parallel to the pcb as well). To separate the display drip isopropyl alchool to losen the adhesive and use some plastic implement to GENTLY slice through/lever SLIGHTLY. Again being GENTLE is necessary, the thing is fragile (silver lining they are dirt cheap). And finally hot glue is your best friend to secure everything in place

[@philscomputerlab]

That's good to know! Thanks for sharing.

[@SireSquish]

Crikey, $88 now. I remember buying goteks as a $19 jobbie and putting the rotary wheel + OLED in myself.

[@TEBLify]

They're still that price, accounting for regular price increases at least. It's just that there's no way to know the chip until you order one and check what you ended up with.

[@Takeshi.Nakagawa]

I bought it last time in January 2024 for € 25.- with shipping from Aliexpress.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea the basic one used to be around 20 Aussie. It's double now.

[@mesterak]

Happy Friday Phil!

[@xjr358]

Thank you! Will buy gotek for my Toshiba T1200 laptop

[@philscomputerlab]

I don't have experience with laptops, the interface might be different?

[@xjr358]

@@philscomputerlab It's different indeed - 26 pins vs 34 pins of a standard drive though I discovered how to make an adapter and it work well

[@philscomputerlab]

@@xjr358 Ah that's cool that there can be an adaptor...

[@Super123456789Kuba]

And now I wish there was something like this but for CDs and DVDs, but that's good that if I were to build a DOS PC... You know, this is it.

[@philscomputerlab]

Agreed 👍

[@retroanderson]

You should do a follow up video of all the best floppy images you should put on your Gotek.

[@GameplayandTalk]

Very cool stuff! I need to get one of these.

[@AWalYT]

I already got two barebones models and modded them myself. Given how they are somehow getting even cheaper I'm thinking I should probably grab a few more so I can start leaving them in devices. Good times for floppy emu fans.

[@ahabwolf7580]

Very cool. Only small nitpick would be the size of the dial. Feels like it sticks out a bit far, easy to accidentally break maybe.

[@philscomputerlab]

I guess a dial with smaller height could be bought and mounted?

[@mmaxeator]

It should also make/play sounds like real floppy drive, include load and eject !

[@philscomputerlab]

Did you play the next game, see how far it would eject a disk?

[@Shmbler]

Finally, after all these years ;-)

[@philscomputerlab]

Haha yea! I'm often late to the party. Going at my own pace 😊

[@Rabbit_AF]

Apparently, my SuperMicro X6DLP-EG2 motherboard can emulate a floppy drive from a USB stick, up to 512MB. I haven't tried it out, but I was surprised to read that in the manual. I don't think it can handle multiple images, though.

[@philscomputerlab]

That is pretty nifty! Some HP Thin Clients can use a USB drive as DOS hard drive, but haven't seen a machine use it as a floppy.

[@DarkZenith]

I have a USB optical emulator that I used to use, however it requires usb startup, I would like a variant with an IDE or SCSI interface instead to mount in the system. Similar idea to the Gotek Floppy

[@philscomputerlab]

SD card to IDE Adapter is what I like to use. It makes loading files and taking images really easy.

[@DarkZenith]

@@philscomputerlab For CD-Images? or for HDD storage?

[@philscomputerlab]

@@DarkZenith HDD storage! It emulated an IDE HDD.

[@playtech7165]

That is awesome!

[@stevenchristenson2428]

I have always considered buying one of these but never have had the need to. I have a bunch of old floppy disks and just use the real 1.44mb disks. Oddly I don't mind using the physical media really and have yet to have a drive die one me. What I do however have issues with quite often is CD roms. I have tried replacing them with a sd to IDE adapters but none of them seam to correctly do digital audio emulation correctly with older operating systems.

[@philscomputerlab]

I had so many issues with real drives and disks, so such a device was perfect! I agree, the community needs optical drive emulation. Discs and drives fail all the time.

[@DeadCat-42]

I went the other way around, I'm currently installing Starfield from floppy. I can't wait to play, I figure I should be finished sometime in August..........2026..

[@casualretrocollector]

I remember paying only 11.99 for the gotek emulator back on 2014.. how times have changed!

[@philscomputerlab]

Here in Australia, same, the basic model was around 20 Aussie dollars. Now it's double that and the model with the screen and dial is around 80. I feel it's mostly the Amiga community that's buying these, Retro PC is still a small niche.

[@rimkastair1100]

if you avoid the resellers, i think you can still get them for something around 20$ directly from Gotek... When you get them from ebay, most of the money got in the pockets of these importers, and btw nothing go to the guy doing the development and the support ...

[@g4z-kb7ct]

@@philscomputerlab there's a lot of scum making money from these. buy the unmodified pc version and flash it yourself.

[@johnwiesen4440]

I use them with my Amigas. I have one internal and one external.

[@stranger.granger]

Would love something like this for CD-R instead of floppies.

[@HansCampbell]

Where does one get the FF.CFG file? 😃

[@GerdLPluu]

On the topic of floppy emulators: Is there something in a slim form factor that might work with an early nineties 486 laptop?

[@karldagreat]

One time, can you please do Windows 2000 retro gaming PC builds and try out games like Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed and Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit with nGlide?

[@Linkintime1]

I have an older gotek for my 500mhz Pentium 3 PC p4b but it is super slow. I'm not sure what I can do to get it to work right. If I wait five minutes after changing floppies it will finally start reading.

[@Omarkoman]

This is cool , thanks for sharing! Any chance you can share a copy of your USB stick with all your images? it would save ton of time creating one. Just dump an image of it so it can be written on any same size USB. Pleaeeeeeaaaaase !!!!

[@philscomputerlab]

Well some of the tools aren't released to the public domain, they are more don't care ware with the creators just not caring. Still, not comfortable for me to share it openly but be assured all the tools can be found online!

[@Omarkoman]

@@philscomputerlab thats fair!

[@stuarthughes3314]

Is there a guide when buying a Gotek? I hear a lot of them are fake. Also, would be great to your list of software you keep on your USB 😊

[@trinitron40237]

Having such a device with an SD card instead of a memory stick would be nice.

[@g4z-kb7ct]

just use a usb to sd adapter ($2)

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Don't copy that floppy or the copyright police well kick in your door The retro gaming space needs a cd rom emulator like this

[@RetroPcCupboard]

There is a CD equivalent of the Gotek. I have one. It isn't a perfect product, and it's expensive. It's called the Tattiebogle IDE simulator. I have been planning to do a video on it, but haven't got around to it yet.

[@r00lz]

For USB there are IODD, works great with windows 9x

[@t.v.9696]

@@RetroPcCupboard that's awesome! No need to keep that game disk in all the time 😎. P. S. I bet it won't work with StarForce and other pesky DRM rootkits.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

@@RetroPcCupboard really? Thank you for the info I'll have to look into that

[@RetroPcCupboard]

@t.v.9696 I am not sure. It supports BIN/CUE files which I think are binary copies, as well as ISO. But the games I have tried so far had no copy protection. The CD itself was the copy protection because in the mid 90s most people didn't have CD burners and HDD sizes were too small to waste on CD images.

[@DataDashy]

I did al mod possible on this lcd mod, potmeter mod for changing it bites the dust on the bottomof some of my box ever since 😂 pxe network boot rocks, it takes a lot of time and effort to set it up but once you do and your box can do it you will never touch cds floppies or emulators ever again ❤ its a pity btw that theydid not come up with something like this for ide cdroms, apparently that old ATAPI standard is too hard to reverse engineer and reproduce imo a cdrom emulator where u can put hundreds of isos on would be way more useful than this.

[@Argoon1981]

Someone should really create a USB "pen drive" more or less in the shape of a normal floppy disk and a reader that can read those, including the reader making mechanical noises. All for those that want the nostalgic experience of handling old school floppy disks but with the convenience and data storage capacity of modern flash disks.

[@philscomputerlab]

Or just use this and enjoy life 😊

[@airmicrobe]

I play Old game with no problem 😊

[@lechuck3337]

Hi Phil, I have a Gotek and I put FlashFloppy on it. But I'm having an issue. My PC doesn't recognize it at all. The Gotek powers on, it;s plugged into the floppy IDE port on the motherboard, the jumper is set to slave. But on startup, it says I don't have any slave drives. Any idea how to fix this?

[@philscomputerlab]

It goes into the floppy port not IDE. IDE is for hard drives.

[@lechuck3337]

@@philscomputerlab That's what I meant. It's in the floppy port (I guess I should've said floppy ribbon cable).

[@andrewaranda4215]

im new to this..i need help ..can i use this gotek emulator to open my s2000 sampler as OS on it..cause sometimes my floppy disk drive cant read the OS on it..thank you.

[@philscomputerlab]

That should work. I assume that sampler uses a regular PC floppy drive? It has the same connection as shown?

[@andrewaranda4215]

@@philscomputerlab thank you so much..God bless

[@moomah5929]

I still got an unused Amiga Gotek lying around. Can this one be flashed with FlashFloppy to work on PCs or are there also some hardware differences? This would also be interesting to know for getting a newer model, as most of them are advertised as being for Amigas.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes that should work 🙂

[@moomah5929]

@@philscomputerlab Thanks. I'll try it with my old one first and will look into one of those fancy new ones later. :D

[@g4z-kb7ct]

@@moomah5929 if you already have ff firmware there is no need to do anything except change the ff.cfg as stated in this vid at 5:15

[@filipetmarcal]

Nice video

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks

[@LilHoss]

Do you have to make any changes to the ff.cnf file to load a boot disk automatically? I'm trying to get a EPSm sampler to boot right away.....

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes. But afaik it keeps mounting the last inserted floppy.

[@LilHoss]

@@philscomputerlab afaik? What that?

[@DetectiveOnan]

Supercharge? Supercharged gotek is with HxC firmware (paid, of course). With superfloppy is surely OK, but not that supercharged

[@philscomputerlab]

Tell us more.

[@yakumoklesk]

Do this unit support single density floppy images? From 360 to 720kb to use in some old 8bit computers (MSX)?

[@philscomputerlab]

Check the website, it has all those details!

[@g4z-kb7ct]

yes it does. I have one running on an old XT with 360k .img files

[@ArztvomDienst]

But it does not emulate the sound of a fdd, no? :,-(

[@philscomputerlab]

Watch the video?

[@alat_ka]

50$ on aliexpress!

[@harvaldi]

Are those cheap emulators from Aliexpress compatible with PC? Sellers claim that they are for yamaha keyboards.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea they aren't any different, make sure it's got the chipset mentioned in the video!

[@harvaldi]

@@philscomputerlab Thank You very much! BTW. Great video. ;)

[@klocugh12]

0:13 slip of the tongue I assume?

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea happens to me quite often 🤣

[@klocugh12]

@@philscomputerlab No worries, we're all human after all!

[@croquette_fr]

Hi. I own one of this adapter, I don't know if it is a Gotek or a clone, but I find it very slow. Installing Windows 3.1 took me forever. Of course, it is really convenient, but sometimes I prefer writing real floppies from a modern computer with my USB floppy drive (still fully supported by Windows 11)

[@AncapDude]

Never used it also thought it was something new lol. Still use real Floppies

[@philscomputerlab]

I had so many issues with real floppies. Need something reliable and Gotek has just worked non stop for me 😊

[@SolidSonicTH]

BUT I WANT TO USE REAL FLOPPIES.

[@cesaru3619]

RIP DOS!

[@philscomputerlab]

?

[@cesaru3619]

@@philscomputerlab DOS is in OS heaven.

[@philscomputerlab]

@@cesaru3619 We're keeping it alive 😀

[@daveholloway185]

Zoom out a bit Phil! You look like you're going to go for someone's neck!

[@angarohangaro5439]