Great video. Thanks for the email. Loved the special pickup 😀. Just for reference; There are switchers that swap the drives so DF0: becomes DF1: and vice versa allowing use of the internal drive. However yes most just replace DF0: so you can’t use the internal drive. (I’ve got one of each). Scramble, those issues were due to the adf still being selected in the gotek so the os got confused. Ejecting the adf or selecting a different image would help. (You’ve probably already worked that bit out, but might help those coming back to the Amiga). The os doesn’t deal with two (or more) disks being called the same. Loved that copper effect on decrunching. Always puts a smile on my face as I used powerpacker on my workbench disk to get as much on it as possible 😀.
simple and practical. helped me understand how to use gotek. I'm also going to buy an amiga 1200 with gotek and also helped a lot to understand why it's better to leave gotek external.
Glad it was helpful. ON an A1200, you can boot from the external by holding down both mouse buttons on boot which will take you to a boot menu. That said, unless you're obsessed with floppy disks, most people prefer to put the gotek inside. This video is just about my personal preference. :) Good luck.
Good to see how people put tech to a use that they need. Many times what would be obvious to some isn't always ACTUALLY obvious. Videos like this help people see what they can do. Nice one!
In terms of preservation of the amiga internal drive i think the gotek is a wonderful idea..to me the gotek is merely giving the amiga a usb port...thanks for the video.
Just last weekend I finished setting up my Amiga. After having built a custom flight case for it as well as a desktop riser/Monitor stand that the Amiga fits under, I wanted to get the actual machine up and running properly. I already did a complete overhaul including cleaning the entire machine inside and out as well as swapping out all the electrolytic caps. I used to have the top of the case off the machine and plugged the Gotek straight in. Did not want to deal with this mess, so I got meself a boot switcher, and an external connection cable for it. Had those lying around for a while as I just did not get around to doing much for a few weeks. The switcher PCB goes into the Even CIA socket, the original chip goes on top of the switcher. Literally a 30 second job. Then took a drill to the back of the case to put the switch in. (Yes I know there is a version that uses keyboard inputs but it was not available at the time I purchased the switcher) Buttoned the case up again and now I can select between booting from either the internal FDD or the Gotek. Very neat solution - and no more hauling boxes of Floppies around when going to retro shows / meet-ups.
I do exactly the same thing with a Gotek (copy/make ADFs), installed it into a real external floppy drive case to replace a damaged floppy drive in said external case. An A500 I have still has real internal floppy so it's great for that, plus also use it for my other Amiga's. My A500+ and an A1200 have internal 'GoEX' drives from Centuriontech I bought a couple of years ago, they're far better than Gotek imo. They're internal slimline that fit perfectly in an A500 or A1200 depending which mount bracket you get. They use SD Cards and have a jogwheel that's a button as well, also have slim mount for the screen to attach to the grill, highly recommend GoEX drives. They cost approx 57GBP with oled and screen mount. I'm not sure how active the site is now though, they seem to be out of stock quite often :(
That's great info. I love the GoEx and I think I've finally soften in that, when my A1200 internal drive fails, I'll be swapping to an internal GoTek or GoEx drive. I'm going to help my nephew restore his original A500 and if the floppy is dead, I'll tell him to go for Gotek or Goex straight away. Mainly because I'm pretty sure he's not going to go re-collecting the original games like I have.
I never had much luck with 2HD disks in my A500 - new ones would kinda be okay but not reliable. Having spent my childhood waiting for floppy drive accesses (I never had a hard disk) the gotek has been a great relief for me! I'll always remember the disk grinding noises though and it's good to hear them again :)
Yeah the structure of DD vs 2HD is not the same on the platter so there's an unavoidable difference. I keep the DDs for special projects and use the 2HDs for most other stuff purely because it really doesn't matter if it fails. Everything that matters is backed up.
I just serviced the A500 Plus floppy drive this week… well I say serviced, it was more a rust removal and restoration job. I’m sure if I’d dropped these Amigas into a well for 23 years they’d have faired just as well as they did in damp storage. With the machine now fully working *cough* (I need to do a future proof recap and get a keyboard membrane after discovering four keys are kaput) it was time to fire up Workbench and then try a few disks not spun in 23 years. Disk drive sounded super smooth and Workbench started with no fuss. Skidmarks rhythmically chattered (that skittering sound a dud disk gives) so I’m guessing damp has got to it and it is now hors de combat. Epic loaded and is where I found the restoration was now not going to be finished this month… I guess people do still have to use 7, U, J and M these days? *sigh* Still, things are far enough advanced that I have time to think about the future of this machine and the fragility of damp stored magnetic media. I set out to ‘restore’ rather than ‘modify’ so your option of an external gotek has serious appeal. This machine looks as good as the day I got it in 1991 so I’m really not interested in butchering the case for mere convenience. With a maxed out A600 already and a full FPGA Amiga next to it I have the luxury of keeping this one fully stock as is my intention with the other A600 and A1200 I’ve yet to restore. Unlike those two though I don’t have the luxury of using a period hard drive internally to make life ‘convenient’. Your ADF to disk tutorial was a ‘This is the way’ moment enabling me to see what was already in front of my eyes all along… Forever Amiga. Also when I do find the disks with all my University papers it would be nice to convert them to ADF so they don’t go the way of Skidmarks. I already have Final Copy II and Wordworth installed on the A600 for when I find them. There are books of material on those discarded disks. There is still something satisfying about popping in a floppy and booting from it… seems almost as magical as when I did it for the first time. Just as long as it doesn’t make the ‘skitter’ noise of death. Thanks for the video, it has given me serious food for thought. 🙂
wow thanks for the update on your A500+. It sounds great. Yeah my A500, while hardly used when I purchased it, ended up with keyboard issues so I feel your pain. Assuming the 500+ has the mitsumi keyboard (it will) I think you can buy brand new membranes for them. I need to service the FDD in the A1200 as that one is hit and miss (more miss than hit). If any of my machines were to get an internal gotek, the A1200 would be the one. But then, you "can" boot from DF1 on the A1200 by default. I need to try that and see how many games like it. Not even tried it yet lol.
@@005AGIMA Yeah, I’ve located a new membrane so parts aren’t a problem. Motivation is more of a thing. This project is a bit of a busman’s holiday so I can only feel ‘enthused’ in fits and starts. After the big push I’m in a ‘meh’ mood as I have lots of paying clients computers to fix. It’ll get there… just not before autumn I suspect. Too hot here to be faffing at the bench on ‘another’ problem. It’s not as though it isn’t working… I just need to avoid typing on it. 🙂
Haha that was just to shorten the load time of workbench as I had nothing to say. Not sure about the viewing pleasure of watching me watch workbench load in real time haha
How do you format the memory stick in Windows 10? Is it FAT 32? Also, with the Flashfloppy firmware, do you still need to have a "boot" file on the memory stick, like with the old Gotek software, or can you just have your ADFs on the memory stick? 🤔
The gotec itself was preconfigured by the guy o purchased it of so in all honesty I don't know what version of flash floppy. All I did was the install in the external Amiga floppy case). The thumb drive I formatted I think as fat 32 from memory. There are no special files or boot files on it. Just folders and ADFs.
Yup, a good video indeed. I think I learned something here. I don't have a Gotek, but I can see now how useful having one would be. About writing to an ADF.... So with an ADF image, you can over write with another ADF image?
Ah good question, and essentially yes. You could use X-Copy to write from DF1 to DF1, and flick between the 2 disk images. Risky in case you miss a disk swap. If you had 2 goteks it would be simpler. But to be honest, it would be MUCH easier to just put the thumb drive in your PC. Select the ADF you want to overwrite and just delete it. Select the ADF you want to copy, and just copy and paste, and rename. That would take seconds. That's the thing, because you can create near infinite number of ADFs, you dont really need to overwrite as such.
Many thanks for this helpful video i'm in your same situation with my father amiga 500+ and i wanna buy gotek (without modding his amiga cause yes i'm scared about ruin it because alot of my childhood and his memories are inside) and backup all his floppies and i was stuck with "what i can do and what i can't" and wondering if x-copy just do the job, so yeah many thanks
Hello, I have an Amiga 500 rev. 5 with kickstart 1.3. I bought an external gotek with flashfloppy firmware, a data ad power cable bought at amigastore. I would like to copy the games I have on the usb stick plugged into the external gotek on floppy disks using the internal floppy drive and x-copy. My problem is that when the external gotek is connected floppy disks don't boot. If I disconnect the gotek, the floppy drive is able again to load the disks. Gotek is set to S0, I tried to change it to S1, but the result is the same. I tried to plug the gotek in the place of the floppy drive and I can select correctly the games and play What I do wrong? Do you have any guide or instructions to make it work?
Hmmmm not sure what the problem is. I think mine is set to sd1 on the jumper but I can't remember. The only thing I can think is, make sure you don't have the same Disk in both df0 and df1 as the Amiga hates this. But if you've not copied disks yet, that's not the issue. Still something to check though. Also note, you can't backup commercial original games using this method. Only cracked copies will work. That's not why it's not booting but thought I'd mention it.
The copy procedure is perfect but you need a XCopy on floppy... and if you don't have one? Can the copy disk program from Workbench boot floppy be used to copy from the virtual mounted disk to a new floppy?
Yes of course. You can do the same using workbench disk copy disks. I honestly can't recall if that fails to copy non-Amiga DOS disks though (as most games are). It may be ok as they are cracked ADFs but not sure. Interesting thing to try. Worst case you could use WB to make a copy of X-Copy maybe?
@@005AGIMA It doesn't work with Workbench copy, on my machine copying is from and to the same drive (DF0 or DF1). I discovered that if I start my Amiga 500 with a blank floppy on DF0, the machine is waiting for a bootable floppy but I can load and start a program into the machine from the Gotek drive (DF1).
Powerpacker decrunching would use that copper effect. I’m thinking it might be that. We did it back in the day to not just make programs smaller, but in some cases it would speed up loading as disk reads vs decrunching (decompressing) in memory could be faster in some cases.
When putting the gotek in the case of an external floppy did you have to tell the gotek it was DF0 so the external case is the thing that makes it DF1?
It was a long time ago now. What I do recall is there's a jumper on the gotek, and o thought it was originally in the correct position, but it didn't work. So I moved the jumper and then it worked.
Only just seen this comment. There are no mods needed to use a PC floppy disk in an A500 drive. You need to mod a PC Floppy "drive" in order to install it into an Amiga for use, but that's not what we're doing here. Disks, no mod is needed. Some people cover the second hole on the disk with tape, but this actually doesn't do anything in an A500 drive.
i have an amiga 500 with the gotek internal.. is there a special file name for the workbench adf file ?? the guy who gave this to me is a dick and didnt explain shit to me at all i still havent used it had it for a year
