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GoTek USB Floppy Emulator Questions


pismire

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Hello.I am stumped on this and hoping someone who has used one of these before can guide me to the promised land?

 

I recently purchased the beige gotek USB floppy emulator, with the LCD readout and two button control on the front panel.

I have a straight through floppy ribbon cable, a 3.5" power cable, and a usb stick.

 

I've installed the unit in my PEB using the original TI disk controller. The ribbon cable is connected to the interior port.

The drive powers up and the LCD reads Ldr.

 

On my pc i've installed the HxC emulation software, and formatted my usb stick to FAT32 as instructed.

I copied one of the 3 .cfg files they supply to my stick.

 

At this point, I was hoping that meant I could power it up and access the usb stick as if it was, for example, DSK1.

Right from TI Extended Basic for example.

 

With the stick inserted into the drive, the GoTek LCD flashes 004 over and over again while the stick's led is solid red.

 

Using their emulator utility I created a SSDD 320k 5.25" disk image and copied that to usb drive. It has no files in it, just an empty image.

 

Same issue... GoTek displays 004 flashing over and over.

I can't seem to find a manual for this GoTek nor a model# and the paper work I received doesn't mention it. It was purchased on recommendation from these forums from ArcadeShopper and he's been very helpful but I don't want to keep bothering him :)

 

 

I am no expert on this stuff and was looking for a cheap / quick way to replace the broken 5.25 in my PEB - not even really caring at this point to transfer images to/from the PC, more just waned a drive solution for my TI itself.

 

Any and all replies welcome and appreciated, even mean ones ;)

 

Thanks!

 

 

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If you have a gotek standard 1 or 2 digit numeric display and two buttons you have to use indexed mode:

 

- "Indexed" mode. Selection based on the file image name : DSKA0000.HFE,
DSKA0001.HFE, DSKA0002.HFE... (IMG Extension also supported).
No extra software or config tool needed.
The lcd display they speak of for normal mode is a 3 line alpha numeric lcd.. and 3 button mode, there's a modification for this but no real graceful way to mount it in your pbox.. I have one I kludged together but it aint pretty
Greg
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Thanks Greg. Is there any documentation that would tell me what the 004 error code means? (I dropped the indexed config on it, and a pre-created image from the chicago ti user group fair, renamed using the DSKA0000.HFE and still have same issue.

 

Starting to wonder if its my cable.

 

I purchased a twisted cable and cut it before the twist...

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I just recently setup my Gotek. A straight ribbon cable connected to the internal male connector on the TI Disk Controller to the Gotek makes it DSK2. I had to make the "TI-twist" to get it to work as DSK1. I didn't see where I could change jumpers to do it. Did the serial bridge install the HXC firmware loader on the Gotek ? It took two tries for me to get it loaded. It should show hXc on the 7-seg LEDs on power up with no jump drive installed. The config file must be the first file copied to the usb stick after it is formatted. Initially I grabbed a 1440 sector HFE file from WHTECH instead of the 720 sector (180k) needed for my DSSD for my TI controller.

 

Don't know if any of the above may help, but this was my learning experience.

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I just recently setup my Gotek. A straight ribbon cable connected to the internal male connector on the TI Disk Controller to the Gotek makes it DSK2. I had to make the "TI-twist" to get it to work as DSK1. I didn't see where I could change jumpers to do it. Did the serial bridge install the HXC firmware loader on the Gotek ? It took two tries for me to get it loaded. It should show hXc on the 7-seg LEDs on power up with no jump drive installed. The config file must be the first file copied to the usb stick after it is formatted. Initially I grabbed a 1440 sector HFE file from WHTECH instead of the 720 sector (180k) needed for my DSSD for my TI controller.

 

Don't know if any of the above may help, but this was my learning experience.

 

or you could move the jumper for disk select..

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Same issue... GoTek displays 004 flashing over and over.

 

 

This means that the gotek is not completely flashed with the firmware. It is looking for an upd file on the usb stick to finish it and didn't found it on the usb stick.

 

You can found the upd files into this archive :

 

http://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_drive_emulator/HXCFEUSB_HFE_beta_firmware.zip

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if this is who I think it is (usernames <> real names) he bought it from me, and I did the header mod and then flashed the bootloader and sent it to him without doing that second step. I'll make sure I do that on future drives. It's just loading that file on the drive and letting it flash and then it should read disks fine

 

Greg

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if this is who I think it is (usernames <> real names) he bought it from me, and I did the header mod and then flashed the bootloader and sent it to him without doing that second step. I'll make sure I do that on future drives. It's just loading that file on the drive and letting it flash and then it should read disks fine

 

Greg

Yes Greg, I am who you think it is. I was away for a bit but just got through all these replies. Thanks to everyone for their input. I will try this 2nd step and see what happens.

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Yes Greg, I am who you think it is. I was away for a bit but just got through all these replies. Thanks to everyone for their input. I will try this 2nd step and see what happens.

 

Ok good, lmk how it goes. Sorry with my move I got a little ahead of myself and shipped it before that step. Done moving now finally.

 

Greg

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Update...

Using the udp file, my GoTek now displays the hxc logo on the led on start up (with usb stick in or not).

 

I removed the udp file from the usb drive, placed the indexed config file on the drive, and a 40-track single-sided .hfe disk named DSK0002.hfe

 

When this drive is in the gotek, the drive's light slowly blinks.

The GoTek continues to read hxc.

 

Pressing the two drive select buttons seemingly does nothing.

 

TI Disk Em2 locks up on the title screen.

 

From TI EB, if I try to save to DSK1 or DSK3 I get an I/O error 66.

 

If I try to save to DSK2 however, the small round LED above the disk selector buttons goes solid green, and the pen drive led goes solid.

After a 1s or so pause, I get the same I/O 66 error.

 

 

I *think* 66 = error saving, device not connected.

 

Still wondering if my issue is cable-related.

 

If I don't want to use somebody's .hfe file, could I not create an empty .hfe disk that I could simply save/load programs to/from from TI EB?

 

And if anyone still reading, does anyone have a known working floppy cable they'd part with :) ??

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Update...

Using the udp file, my GoTek now displays the hxc logo on the led on start up (with usb stick in or not).

 

I removed the udp file from the usb drive, placed the indexed config file on the drive, and a 40-track single-sided .hfe disk named DSK0002.hfe

 

When this drive is in the gotek, the drive's light slowly blinks.

The GoTek continues to read hxc.

 

Pressing the two drive select buttons seemingly does nothing.

 

TI Disk Em2 locks up on the title screen.

 

From TI EB, if I try to save to DSK1 or DSK3 I get an I/O error 66.

 

If I try to save to DSK2 however, the small round LED above the disk selector buttons goes solid green, and the pen drive led goes solid.

After a 1s or so pause, I get the same I/O 66 error.

 

 

I *think* 66 = error saving, device not connected.

 

Still wondering if my issue is cable-related.

 

If I don't want to use somebody's .hfe file, could I not create an empty .hfe disk that I could simply save/load programs to/from from TI EB?

 

And if anyone still reading, does anyone have a known working floppy cable they'd part with :) ??

 

you don't have your cable reversed do you? pin 1 on the drive is usually closest to the power connector and on the TI it should be keyed/obvious.

 

Greg

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you don't have your cable reversed do you? pin 1 on the drive is usually closest to the power connector and on the TI it should be keyed/obvious.

 

Greg

I flipped the end around on the gotek- seemed i had 1 on the other side. Still get the same i/0 66 error but now TI DM2 doesn't lock up. It does give me a disk error 16 however if i try to catalog dsk1, 2, or 3. optimistic baby steps it seems in the right direction

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  • 8 months later...

I have a question: I too have a Gotek flashed with FF not HXC , I bought the HXC program a while ago but has an LCD hooked up to it, when I took out the two blue and yellow connector out I saved them for later and now to flash HXC seems to be that I need to hook up the 3 segmnet LED but Ihave no idea where thoe 4 wires go on the LED part, I have figured out the other end on the board, thats no problem...

 

Russ Campbell

 

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I have a question: I too have a Gotek flashed with FF not HXC , I bought the HXC program a while ago but has an LCD hooked up to it, when I took out the two blue and yellow connector out I saved them for later and now to flash HXC seems to be that I need to hook up the 3 segmnet LED but Ihave no idea where thoe 4 wires go on the LED part, I have figured out the other end on the board, thats no problem...

 

Russ Campbell

 

Here is a place you might find an answer at. http://99er.net/blog/blog/2016/05/06/using-a-gotek-floppy-emulator-with-hxc-on-my-ti-994a/

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  • 1 year later...

I still need some help with setting up a gotek drive as drive 1. I'm not sure if I'm using the rt cable. Is the micro USB to the programmer supposed to be just power? I have it connected to a power brick. I copied the config file, and a hex file to a fat32 formatted USB stick and am using it in the USB slot on the gotek. I have my power leads running from the gotek power connector to the programmer. I'm only getting 2 red LEDs on the programmer and nothing else..what am I doing wrong? Thx

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  • 2 weeks later...

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