External Gotek on Amiga 500 with Drive-Selector Switch 

Really? And all of that while the internal floppy drive is also enabled? I'd love to find out more and give it a try!

@@NoelsRetroLab Yes, the internal floppy also works, this is a copy/paste from Keirf's GitHub that refers to it, and I think also a link where you can buy the cables. It is however quite easy to build them yourself. How can I send you the schematic of the cable? One other nice feature I have installed is the kickstart switch from Keith, I am using one of the signals of the address lines to switch the bootselector (which I also installed). This way you not only have a switchless kickstart but also switchless bootselector :-) Replacing an external drive depends on the enclosure or cable being used. Amiga external drive enclosures usually include the circuitry to allow the Amiga to identify the presence of the drive. In this case the Gotek with S0 jumper is usually a straight swap for the old floppy drive. If using a passive cable such as this Ebay item then be aware that this identification circuitry is missing, but for arcane reasons identification will typically happen to work as long as the Gotek has an image mounted when the Amiga boots. If you are having problems with your drive being identified, seeForcing Drive Identification below.

Hi Patrick. May you share more info on that cable schematic and 3d printing files for the external gotek?

www.ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/designs/Floppy_Adaptor_V2/External_drive_wiring_V2a.png Here you can find how to wire it up, I used a normal floppy idc cable and soldered the wires to a modified db25 so it will fit the db23. I cut 2 not used wires from the idc connector side and connected a power connector to these and soldered them to 5v and gnd on the db25 side.

Yes, this is a very important point that Patrick Kerkhof is making. As a user I can verify that the described setup works flawlessly, I use it on my Amiga 500 where the Gotek is connected to the external disk drive connector via a modified DB25 connector cable that also provides power. I bought the cable on ebay, it was cheap and easy. I think Noel is right about keeping these old systems as original as possible, so this is a really good solution. If you have the ACA500+ you can actually switch the boot select (DF0/DF1) in the start-up menu instead of installing a fysical switch.

Right. That makes sense since a lot of the copy programs have the option for 4 drives but there's only one drive connector. Thanks for clearing that up.

I've tried chaining multiple goteks in cases in this way and it works just great

Oh, neat! I didn't think about that. I assume each would need to have its own disk controller, right? What would be the main purpose of having multiple drives chained like that? Massive copying of disks, or would a game with multiple disks be smart enough to check all available drives for different disks?

@@NoelsRetroLab It depends on the software. Some software only looks for DF0:, some only look for DF0: and DF1:, and some can and do use all 4 drives if you have them all connected. The main purpose was to reduce disk swapping, as many games would load something from say Disk 1, then Disk 4, than Disk 2. If you only had the one drive, obviously you'd have to swap each time it wanted a different disk, with two drives you'd only have to swap one disk (so in this case, eject Disk 1 and insert Disk 2, and if the game supported all 4 drives, you could just pop each disk in a drive and off you go.

​@@NoelsRetroLabcontrary to an Ms DOS PC the Amiga always checks all drives for an inserted disk. Note the message says "Insert a disc in ANY drive". Back in the days I had an external disk drive and it was a breeze playing 2 floppies games

You won't regret it. It's a great way to set it up. Good luck!

Good to hear. Good luck with it!

I can see that. I really like having both the Gotek and the real drive functional, so for me it was worth the small modification, but I get why people wouldn't want to do that. There's probably a way to put the switch on the external drive with a minor cable. Heck, I wonder if the drive connection has an unused pin that could be used for this. Que bom que gostou dos videos :-)

Right! Especially if you already have an external one, that's a no-brainer. That's a great upgrade!

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-t6fR8lwg_BE.html

@@andymorrow6273 Thank you.

Thanks! I never considered it would be unsafe to be honest. All it's doing is routing a single signal differently, so I expect it should be totally fine.

@@NoelsRetroLab I've read in several places that it's NOT fine. It can damage the CIA chip.

Thanks! To be honest, I'm probably not being careful enough. I've been told I should be wearing one of those ESD wrist straps and probably have an grounded ESD mat as well. It's in my list of things to look into, and I'm sure it's not a bad idea, but on the other hand, I'm not blowing up chips on a regular basis as far as I can tell (except the video I'm recording right now coincidentally). Hope you continue enjoying the videos.

@@NoelsRetroLab If you went bare foot and dont have a carpet on the floor but wood or tiles and do not wear syntetics, its nearly impossible to get staticly charged. A style of clothing you normaly do not wear in school or at work in the old days. Of course with home schooling and home office, at least in Germany working barefoot in underwear seem to have become the actuall normal office outfit, so ESD equipment had gone obloete now....

That's a pretty cool hack! Anyway, time to take the Amiga out of the attic 😃

@@NoelsRetroLab Rest assured, that time will come. First we (my GF and I) have to finish renovating the attic - It's going to become our leasure palace, and my (retro) mancave - no association with RMC haha - I have already built the workbenches that will host a lot of retro and non-retro work. Might I take this opportunity to compliment you on your channel, your way of doing things and ready to go to great lengths to get a job done, even if it means doing some fringe stuff and trying out new things. I really like that. Oh and kudos for your very clear english, and especially your vocabulary!

I've just made the same disappointing observation! The vendor of the drive switch Noel mentions, actually mentions it! Big bummer.

That's something that's still in my list of things to do. I would love to set up an external Gotek on an Atari ST instead of replacing the internal one, which is what you see most often.

@@NoelsRetroLab … Can’t wait to see and learn about anything and everything you can do with Atari STs! 😊😊😊

No, I didn't change any pins. I don't remember the exact configuration. Maybe it's displayed in the video at some point?

At 2:11 you can see the jumpers and I don't have any set.

Haha... I've been looking for that exact setup myself! I might have to figure it out. If I do I'll make a video for sure.

Thanks! I usually get the parts from Aliexpress. Search for .91" OLED and piezo buzzer. You can buy Goteks there pretty cheaply too.

@@NoelsRetroLab Great, thanks for the info.

Absolutely. 99% of the time you want the Gotek as DF0, so that seems totally reasonable.

Oh man, if you don't have a Gotek right now, that would give you hours and hours of enjoyment on your Amiga for sure! Do it! 😃👍

@@NoelsRetroLab It is still a stock machine at the moment, only purchased it this YEAR. (I had a batman pack back in the day) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dO0pDaviQDc.html

Would love to work this out

Thanks! Yeah, probably just cost savings 😃

I didn't know that. Booting from the external drive is the most important thing I wanted to achieve from this. Is there a drawback to having the external drive never being DF0? I can't think of anything.

@@NoelsRetroLab Many games assume the drive their are booted from is df0: So they start to boot, than access to df0: to load a file and fail. Simply a bad art of programming. Quite a big drawback... The CIA on the A1200 are PLCC44, not DIP. No socket, so no adapter. But of course, you have df0_select on the internal connector for the floppy drive and df1_select on the external connector. So cut the df1_select pin of the external drive connector and solder one wire to the pcb (to get df1_select) and one to the external connector (to put df0 or df1 select depending on switch position there). Also cut df0_select line on the internal floppy cable, sending the df0_select to the switch and the signal selected by the switch back to the internal drive.

Not sure. I imagine you'd need a different kind of Oled display, but I don't remember seeing them anything other than blue or white. You could leave the segment digit display the Gotek originally came with for a more retro feel (although it's a lot less functional).

​@@NoelsRetroLab Im trying to find our old messages where you told me exakt witch buzzer you used :) but i can't find it again so if you can tell me witch one to buy :) thanks J

Also the flat connector on my gotek is larger than tha flat cable in the DF1, so I am stuck.

Good point. There's power to be had in the Amiga connector, but not in the Gotek data cable itself. That's why there's always need of extra cables (although sometimes they can be more tidy and they split up closer to the Gotek than the Amiga). Still, it means connecting multiple things to the Gotek, which is a slight inconvenience.

@@NoelsRetroLab Thanks for the clarification, I was wondering what part I had missed hehehehe Keep up the good work and have a nice weekend :)

That makes no sense. The switch is a really simple switch that moves a couple of signals around. It sends DF0 enable to DF1 and viceversa. So they must mean that when you have the switch on, BOOTING from the internal drive is disabled and you boot from the external one instead. But you're right, even the one I bought sais that. Weird! www.ebay.co.uk/itm/273053625803

Inside an external floppy case there is a small circuitry that does two things : activate the motor only if required and identifying the drive type connected. Inside an amiga 500 there is also the circuitry to activate the motor but nothing for identifying the drive. This is no problem since the ROM assumes that DF0 is "double density" and always present. The problem happens when you logically swap DF0 and DF1 : the external drive become DF0 and works perfectly but the internal drive which should become DF1 isn't recognized since it lacks the identifying circuitry... Mods are possible but quite hard to carry out ;)

@@thomasquemar969 so it means that if I want to copy from external gotek as DF0 to internal drive as DF1 I can't? thanks for a reply

@@lucagentile4247 Yes you can but you'll have to flip the switch several times during copy to read from one drive and write to the other, as if you were using only one drive (DF0) and swapping source and destination discs.

@@thomasquemar969 thks. I still have to buy a gotek, how about this one for my purpose (without modding anything)? I can see there are 2 switches but I wonder if they can be useful to my goal, I asked the seller but never replied www.ebay.it/itm/Gotek-USB-Externes-Floppy-Disk-Emulator-3-5-Amiga-16GB-USB-mit-vielen-Zubeh%C3%B6r/324415054532?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

1) Probably off Ebay. Look up "Cumana" which is supposed to be a pretty good brand, but others also work fine. 2) No idea! I haven't messed around with a 1200 yet. Maybe someone else can chip in if they know.

The Gotek works fine inplace of the internal A1200 floppy, but I don't know about the external. I reffer you to your own question 1. I can't find one either.

I found this amigastore.eu/440-amiga-external-floppy-disk-drive-adapter-m1.html And this. The switch doesn't say it compatible.with the 1200. But I'm including the links for those who are looking for these amigakit.amiga.store/product_info.php?products_id=12673

@@Kenny-bw2cz That's what i have, i haven't installed it all yet though.

The gotek works with all amigas as External Drive. The Switch itself i think only with similar build amigas like a2000

I don't know! I have never used an A1000. I would think so, but someone else can confirm that.

Oh really? I didn't realize external drives were becoming rare. I bought mine last year and I seem to remember it was around 30€. But things keep going up all the time. Are there external drives that are not compatible with the Gotek, or is any external Amiga drive good enough?

@@NoelsRetroLab Not to my knowledge, I would assume that if the controller is good for any regular Amiga drive it'll also work with your modded Gotek.

BokanoiD there at least 2 types of external drives. The ones that use a regular amiga floppy drive and the ones that use a regular pc drive with special circuits. The first ones work right away with the gotek, for the second ones you need to modify the circuit but I’m not 100% sure how.

@@rodrigosaez9999 Thanks for you response. It might very well be possible that it was such a drive; I also tried a working Amiga disk drive and that also wouldn't work. I did luckily managed to get an external drive that does work with a Gotek, so I'm happy now. :)

BokanoiD nice. I just bought another gotek to try it on one of my external drives. The previous one didn’t work on the external one I disassembled . I still haven’t found a detailed explanation of what to do.

There are two buttons to navigate different images (which is the equivalent of switching disks). Wherever you stop, that's the image you have currently selected.

This this one, by nene: opengameart.org/content/theme-song-8-bit (updated in description, thanks for the reminder).

@@NoelsRetroLab Thank you! ♥

Yes, I believe you could. The only thing is that you need the Gotek and a controller for it. Or at least so I thought. Someone told me it's not necessary, but I haven't confirmed that. In any case, yes, there's definitely space internally and that would be a lot more convenient than pulling out that brick of an external drive 😃

@@NoelsRetroLab Actually there seems to be much more interesting projects than a gotek. In 2013 there have been at least two projects to use a Raspberry Pi with a bunch of discrete parts for about $5 simulating an Amiga Floppy drive. At that time the Pi Zero W did not exist; I wonder if its possible to port that projects to it. It would be about 5$ more than a gotek - but transfering adf´s via wlan and selecting image to load via webbrowser would eliminate any need of case modding, as you use the sd of the pi and do not need swapping it arround to transfer data. It even emulates two floppys in parallel (if df1_sel is at the floppy cable like on A2000 A3000 or A4000, or added manualy to it). So using the Pi Floppy Emulation + internal drive would allow 3 floppys at the same time (if you also route df2_sel to internal cable). Have not gone into details of the projects now, only read summary articles. Edit: Sorry, now found out the Pi +5$ Hardware solution does not use an operating system on the pi, so no wlan available (but still an interesting solution) while the wlan version uses a pi and a SB HxC Floppy Emulator (>>100$), so out of range in price (and also cant write to image). But there might be an interesting alternative: It should be possible to use an ESP32 (or even ESP2866) in i2c-client mode to put the i2c output for the oled into a web-server. Also with up/down buttons using two I/O-pins it should be able to select images. So you can select images via smartphone and avoid button and display on the Amiga. Also there is a simple mod for making SD-Cards accessible via webdav using an esp (de.aliexpress.com/i/4001031573171.html). This in combination with SD->SD adapter (instead USB-Stick) might work to transfer adf between PC and gotek...

Really???? That's so weird! I've never seen a Gotek case without mounting brackets. I have an empty Gotek casing and you're welcome to it if you want.

Oh, I didn't know that! Do you switch with some key press or something like that? Where do you get that ROM?

@@NoelsRetroLab you press and hold both mouse buttons on boot. Amigastore.eu has the rom chips.