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Gotek Troubleshooting

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First post, by Onyx Jaguar

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Howdy everyone. I have been having issues trying to install a Gotek into one of my PCs. And trying to do a search of the blasted things seems to yield only Amiga results. If I get an Amiga and go that route I'm sure the internet as it stands now will be helpful but alas...

Anyway so step by step of what is going on and how I installed it.

First I needed to get a molex/floppy connector splitter as I ran out of floppy power connectors. installed that, then I installed the ribbon cable upside down. Fixed that right away.

Formatted three different usb flash drives, one an old kingston 8 gb from around 2009-2010. Another a new no name Walmart brand 32 gb and another a newish sandisk that is 8 gb. All formatted with USB Floppy Manager. Put the same contents on all of them.

Not a single one of them would work with the Gotek.

Tried testing in dos. Comes up with the generic Floppy A (which is where I have it installed) not working.

Tried changing the image/floppy path on the Gotek from 0 to 1. Now it goes up to 1, in fact it will go up to whatever but it doesn't stay. Basically if I change it from 0 to 1 for instance it will say 1 for a couple of seconds then the display goes back to 0.

Tried loading real fast in DOS while 1, 2, 3 whatever were highlighted. Still nothing.

I took out the gotek, checked the jumpers and its on s1 which from what I understand is accurate.

Put it back in, retried the flash drives, same thing happened. I did notice that if I didn't have a flash drive plugged in that the inputs on the unit wouldn't change from 000, which makes sense.

What is going on/what am I doing wrong? Is there specific types of Flash drives that I'm suppose to use?

Reply 1 of 4, by Viserion

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Are you sure you got the right version of Gotek.
I think I had the same problem where I could not get it to work using default image.

Alternatively you can flash it with flashfloppy if you have a programmer for that (you can't go back AFAIR to using standard image once it is flashed to flashfloppy).

If you flash you can mod with OLED/LCD screen so you can see floppy image, sound and other mods.

Reply 2 of 4, by Jo22

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Onyx Jaguar wrote:

What is going on/what am I doing wrong? Is there specific types of Flash drives that I'm suppose to use?

Hi, did you read the manual ? I don't remember the details anymore, but I believe there was a key combo on the Gotek that started a format routine for the USB pen drive.
Anyway, you can't simply insert a FAT32 formatted pen drive and expect it to work. That's not the way the original Gotek firmware works.
If you're lucky, you will find some of the Gotek manager software online. It will prepare your pen drive for you.
But even then, you won't see multiple "floppies" on Windows. Windows Explorer doesn't support multiple partitions for removable media.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 3 of 4, by Onyx Jaguar

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I got it to work, where I screwed up was misinterpreting the initial error of the ribbon cable. I ended up testing by B drive (real floppy) and found that I had the data cable plugged in wrong.

Which means that I initially plugged it in right and the Gotek wasn't working, so I reverted what I did and lo and behold it all works. What I think might have happened is that the first time, while I had the cable in the proper orientation what I didn't do was plug it in correctly. I noticed that I had some difficulty plugging it in without a guide (as the gotek the pins are all out there, while all the floppy drives I have are boxed in so you can't plug in incorrectly unless you are doing it upside down). When I was double checking I felt a couple of pins that were not secured in the plug, so I'm speculating that's what happened the first time, but I just did not catch it.

However I seem to recall plugging the cable in, and then screwing the Gotek in, but that's the most likely thing I can think of that went wrong. As the only other alternative was, was that both drives were plugged in correctly, but the gotek didn't show up for some other reason.

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