Roland S-50 Digital Sampling Keyboard Gotek upgrade

[@marcthenarc868]

Did you manage to dump your disk library to hard drive ? I'm looking for the old SDISK utility for DOS by Nick Grant and can't find it anywhere on Google - it kind of disappeared from USENET around 2004, I found some other tool called SDISKW for older Windows (can't run it). I'm currently trying with dd under Linux to mirror the disk with mixed results. Perhaps I'm missing something ... Any help appreciated.

[@GrahamTinkers]

The S-50 is not mine, I was fitting the gotek for a friend; you can download the OS and other floppy images from Roland’s website (when I did the upgrade). As far as I remember the floppy’s are a standard dos format; you can create floppy images on Windows PC and just copy the files over.

[@tpeerson]

Did you purchase a Gotek already configured for the S-50, or did you configure it via a FF.CFG file on your usb drive?

[@GrahamTinkers]

I flashed the drive with FlashFloppy via the serial interface; you can then update the firmware using the USB port. The newer versions of the gotek drives can be updated using a USB A to USB A cable, but I still prefer to do it via the serial interface.

[@toomanyclamps130]

So when i flash my gotek with flash floppy 3.39 it shows the version on the display screen of gotek but when i load a .img file or .out file it just says insert system disk. What filename(s) and extensions do you need for it to just load the system disk. Ive followed the forums and documentation but still not working. Any help would be great!

[@GrahamTinkers]

Hi, Are you using the OLED Display? If so, can you see the file names displayed? I download the office disk images from the Roland website, they are .img files. The issue could be related to the config file for FlashFloppy or it could be with the USB drive, I tried a generic flash drive and it worked with ther Gotek but would not load the disks on the Roland, I used a old 32GB Sandisk drive and that worked fine.

[@MarcosGomes64bits]

Hi, dear friend. What model of floppy disk emulator you have installed on the Roland S50?

[@GrahamTinkers]

It just a standard Gotek drive.

[@VintageMusicGearTV]

How did you load os on to usb stick please

[@GrahamTinkers]

The OS is available as a disk image, just copy it to the USB stick.

[@jessihawkins9116]

you have to format it as an MS-DOS startup disk first

[@gimble8638]

more like 30-odd years old, launched 86/87 ;)

[@twiff3rino28]

86 🙂

[@christopherrusch3165]

So by doing this you're able to load multiple floppy disks into one usb, and just use a single usb rather than several floppy disks?

[@GrahamTinkers]

Yes, you can access up to 1000 floppy images on the one usb stick.

[@vammyhouse5206]

This is interesting makes me want to pick up a Roland s50... if I have .wave samples I want to load on usb to play in the Roland how would I do it? Convert .wav to .IMG , load it up from usb and the emulator should read it?

[@GrahamTinkers]

The Gotek emulates a floppy disk drive, you would have to create a disk image and then put your wave file on the image and put the image on you usb drive.

[@crnogor]

Help full clip ! Beside , construction is not ergonomic cos , USB is sticking out from keyboard body ! You didn't care that there is no ground on the main power plug !!!?

[@GrahamTinkers]

The USB Drive detracts from the look of the keyboard but the convenience far outweighs this. When this KB was built there probably was not a requirement to have a PE connection. What was more worrying was the lack of insulation on the mains side when working inside the KB.