Gotek Floppy Emulator Jumper Settings

The emulator arrived by FedEx earlier on today. It only took two days since the order, which is excellent, but unfortunately this was the only good thing about Gotek.

The FedEx bag looked like it has been used by at least 5 previous shipments and has already circled the globe few times. The inner package was even worse, a bit of old bubble wrap taped together with the unit and unpacked cdrom. Disgusting!

The unit itself looks rather good, they have made a better looking self adhesive front panel label.

I went to replace my original 1.44MB floppy drive with Gotek. First roadblock that I encountered was the fact that the emulator is about an inch shorter and the original floppy cable did not reach so I had to improvise. The unit powered on so I went on to the documentation and software.

Documentation is absolutely horrible. Written in Engrish is rather hard to understand, however invaluable because without it you will not be able to figure out how to use the software. Looks like they are aware of the software limitations because the documentation is full of workarounds and troubleshooting.

The software is even worse. It only works on Windows XP / 2000, so I had to run it inside VMware Workstation with USB pass-through It actually did work but usability is similar to RiscOS or Plan 9. Here is a photo from one of the manual pages that illustrates both the documentation and the application itself.

So how does it actually work? Here is a small excerpt from the user manual: 'We will divide a pen drive into 100 partitions of 1.44 mb capacity each.' – err what? That's right, this is what they are doing. Dividing a pen drive to small partitions and multiplexing them so that you see one at a time. You select the partition using the buttons on the front panel or from the software. When you switch the floppy drive will be mapped to another partition. On the host computer you can see it as a removable drive in Windows Explorer.

Gotek has promised me that the Type-F will support non-FAT and bootable floppy disks. So I started testing with writing QNX2 aclock demo floppy disk using ntrawrite.

The system has completely freaked out and went to an error mode. Fortunately described in the troubleshooting guide, however requires full reformatting. Now imagine rewriting 100 floppy disks stored on the unit… I spent hours trying to figure what is going in. Medical license puerto rico reciprocity. What I think is that the non-FAT bootable disk can only be used in 'singular mode' where you store just a single floppy disk image on the pen drive. What a waste, but it did work and in the end I did boot QNX2 on my 286 from a pen drive.

The next test was trying to boot Xenix from emulated 1.2MB 5.25″ drive. I have re formatted the singular drive to 1.2MB and switched it in the bios. However the system never actually loaded.

When it comes to FAT compatible operating systems like MS-DOS or OS/2, you can actually boot and use multiplexed floppies. You can install MS-DOS 6.22 by flipping the selector to change disks. Pretty cool. I was also able to run BIOS built in floppy disk diagnostics.

So the device sort of works. I was able to boot a non-DOS operating system and for DOS based floppies I was able to hold more than one disk per USB key. However the whole experience was rather horrible. The verdict:

• Packaging: garbage
• Usability: garbage
• Software: garbage
• User manual: garbage
• Compatibility: garbage
• Total: garbage

Gotek Usb Floppy Drive Emulator

So in short do not waste your time with this. Do not buy Gotek unless you absolutely have to.

Roller coaster tycoon 2 scenarios download. I'm still awaiting for arrival of HxC, however it appears to be stuck in Polish Post Office, probably due to the holiday season.

Update: EMUFDD has provided me with a link to their page that lists all Gotek-like cheap Chinese and Indian made devices – with a warning how bad they are. They are claiming that German Ipcas also sells Gotek like devices, so I will be updating my previous post.

I wanted to post a more in depth instructions for those using this on there mpc 2000 or 2000 xl , it could also probably work for other mpc in general , I spent days trying to figure out how to use this drive it came with zero instructions most videos I felt people were more so showing off that they got it to work and really didnt explain. More than a few articles and forum posts I saw that people using certain programs on there pc could only truly get there usb drive to partition too 100 1.44mb. I found out a hybrid solution using a free program , and a tendak usb floppy drive. Both Gotek and Tendak drive were just under 50$ us.(using windows)
1.)Turn off power to mpc and open it up basic screw setup get the backing and control panel board off mpc and gently remove hard drive, detach the cables and put gotek drive in place attach the two cables, put everythig back on mpc .
2.)Download version 1.40i from the free software company called IPCAS http://www.ipcas.com/support/usb-floppy .. nload.html, this is the program you will use to format one of your usb with this . Here is the quick steps to use the disk emulator program after instalation I do believe there youtube videos showing how to.
a.)Put in usb flash drive ,open program top left corner you will see the drive you plugged in go to the drive and right click format, keep in mind this will erase anything previous on that flash drive.There will be a window prompt pop up make sure you set the partition to 100 it will break the drive into 100 1.44mb folders essentially and make sure you click the dos option this will add a dos prompt to each folder you only need it in one but it makes it easier and you can always delete with a click in the folder. hit format it will ask you if your sure or not just dot it, and your usb is now partioned in a way your mpc can understand.
b.)On the right of the screen you will now see or should now see the 100 partitions click on the very first partition this will be the very first file your gotek drive will read to the mpc, you will see the three dos boot files you need this for the boot up part.
c.)Plug in Tendak usb floppy drive on my computer the drive read was A, insert your boot floppy I have 1.72 and it will read it like any other hard drive open the drive folder and you should see three files for the OS boot up , highlight those files and drag them in the first folder in your ipcas program, unplug usb plug into gotek drive power it up to show that it works and will boot from the first partition on that storage device.

Gotek Usb Floppy Emulator

What few have explained about the GOTEK drive is that there are two buttons that serve functions of scrolling through the partitions inside of mpc or what ever compatible and when the usb is unplugged it also has a few functions because of its internal memory its to set read or writing modes that allow it to be transported info from pc to mpc etc, that part is tricky and where I think should be written about or explained more . So the concept is that you really dont need to format usb on pc the idea is that it formats from the GOTEK drive itself and partitions to 1000 on its own which is amazing considering it eliminates the need for possible faulty drives or disks. The only problem I ran into is that when you go through the partition process it wipes the OS so you need to find a way to boot mpc after you partition gotek drive if that makes sense. So I figured I would make two compatible forms of using usb drive with mpc 2000.
2.)Now that you have a 100 partitioned boot drive , you can now setup and partition the second usb.
a.)plug in second usb into the gotek drive make sure that it isnt turned on and hold in the two buttons on the drive and power on machine you will see it start to count up once you see that let go it will go up to 998 or so once its done creating your 1000 partitions you will notice now that after you power off it will give you a disk error message or something. power machine back off, you second usb is now successfully partioned and formated to use fully on your mpc...but now you notice there is no OS boot on the new second usb.

Gotek Floppy Emulator Jumper Settings Apk

b.)plug second drive into pc you will notice it will be name fl000 or something like that and it will seem that the whole drive is the size of a floppy disk that is just the first partition on your gotek drive the pc is registering , no problem though go into the ipcas program make sure usb one is plugged in your pc and open up the first folder like before and you just highlight and copy the files in the floder including the mpc ones and drag them into your second usb drive, you now have a dos boot mpc OS file in the first partition on your usb so you can now plug in mpc power up you now have your boot and a thousand partition usb.

Gotek Usb Floppy Emulator Jumper Settings

The first usb I use as a back up boot and a way that is easy for me to drag files from old disks to add to and from my pc to the mpc and the second drive is for my main stand in drive I hope this rant made sense to you this method works great for me and I think allot out there searching could be helped .