USB drives for 8-Bit BBC Micro? GoTek Floppy Emulators (Model B users Beware!)

[@trickysoft]

Like one of your other viewers, I paid around £15 for my GOTEKs, but flashing the first one did take a few hours and require a 99p adapter from China. I hadn't heard that any BBC model was incompatible with the GOTEK, but had heard of the index setting. The downside of using them with a model B is that unless you have a working floppy, you might need to fiddle to get the controller working. The Master and Compact have soldered in components and in my experience always work. The main benefit from my point of view is that they have the best compatibility. The MMC solutions are much faster, but that can be a mixed blessing.

[@SpaceFlightOrange]

Tom, The Gotek does work with the 8271 Disc Controller. if you're running the Flash floppy firmware on the Gotek, which yours is, you need to put "index-suppression = no" in your FF.CFG file on the usb stick. this will make it work. I've been running a fully modded Gotek on my issue 3 Model A (upgraded) with an 8271 in for over a year now. it's documented here github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki/FF.CFG-Configuration-File

[@WiFiSheep]

Hi James! .... OMG No way!!!! Thanks for the heads up on this, I will look into this ASAP. No one I talked to mentioned this at all so cheers for the info. If I can get this working, and I don't doubt you, i'll do an update video in the coming days! Really appreciate your comment :-)

[@booboyBL]

Hi Tom. At first, I thought the £40 price tag for the Gotek was a bit steep, but as it comes ‘ready to go’ and with all the needed cables it seems reasonable. I paid about about £15 each 2 years ago, but with no cables, and I had to flash the firmware onto the drive myself. I have modded them to use a rotary encoder and with an OLED display (which will display the actual name of the selected floppy image). These works happlily with my 2 model Bs and my Master 128. Good to see that the good old beeb is still getting the attention it deserves from the retro computing community.

[@jms019]

I’ve got a B with two Watford dual “Z80 pack” drives. Presumably I’d need to go back to an Acorn from the Watford DFS (called MCP)

[@WiFiSheep]

Hi, you might find it works ok. Since this video was shot new information has came to light, and i have the go-tek working with the stock controller. I dont know for sure with the watford unit but it might work. An update video will be released shortly. Pi PICO news has pushed it back a few days!