Spent 5 days getting my GPU working. It was one of those problems where the GPU worked 3 out of 50 times when rebooting. Tried every imaginable BIOS setting, removed PCI cards, etc. etc. etc. for 5 f*cking days. On the 5th day, Saturday morning, piss drunk, dead tired, I tried one last attempt by moving the GPU from the PCIExpress 3.0 slot to the PCIExpress 2.0 slot. It worked. Just wasted 5 days on that, but like I said it was one of those "sometimes works" problems. I think the problem was that my CPU couldn't start up fast enough for the GPU.
This isn't a failed project in my view, I find it quite interesting and you clearly put a lot of work into it. This also CLEARLY shows the value of documentation and service manuals, which computers used to come with, but no longer do in our disposable society. I love the adapter cable you made! :)
Great video as always! Even though the video doesn't have a happy ending it was fun following your journey! I really like the background music at 2:00.
The bundled software is crap. Here's what I use and it works great! - www.ipcas.com/support/usb-floppy-emulation-download.html - Make sure you right click the corresponding floppy slot and click save after copying your files. You don't have to do this when writing .img files. Shout out to +PhilsComputerLab for this.
I was one of the supporters of releasing this video despite it having no happy ending. Glad you posted it, unfortunate that it didn't work, but the process is very interesting.
+The 8-Bit Guy Is it just a standard regulator like a 7805/7812 etc? You could run down to Tanner in Carrollton or probably a Radio Shack. If you've never been to Tanner, I highly recommend it for surplus parts and cool odds and ends. Lots of chips for repairing vintage computers (6502 chips, Z80s, SRAMs). They tend to keep a lot of Adafruit stuff and RPi stuff in stock as well.
+The 8-Bit Guy You need to flash the drive to the Cortex firmware. You can find all the necessery steps here cortexamigafloppydrive.wordpress.com/ It certainly works wit A500 and should work with all amigas according to the author.
4:54 I think it isn't the greatest to combine ale wires toghether because you can make short circuit or you can blow up power suply due the voltages for each function.
Its the battery probably. I have a bunch of those old Toshiba's (T1000, T1200, wanted to get that T1400 at EDS:P) and they all run though the battery first then the incoming power charges the battery. So if the battery is shot, even if you charge it a little bit, the computer will die the second it trys something high current like the floppy. I just refurbishment my NiCad battery's with cheap cells from china, but you can also just connect directly to the batter tabs with a wire.
I love your videos. I like this one too, don't get me wrong. But this video looks like it's about EVERYTHING ELSE BUT THE FLOPPY EMULATOR xD hahahaha PS: man, you broke a Tandy... that's like crashing a Ford T... you realized that? :P
Love the fact you posted your journey. Glad to see someone of your caliber going through those same hurtles old gear puts us all through. Never stop man.
I think it's fun, haha. It adds an extra element of challenge for the content creator and then added suspense for both him and the audience. What will the ePacket from China bring us for this project??? TUNE IN NEXT TIME! Lol
I enjoy it. Especially when it shows up 3 months later and you don't necessarily remember ordering half the stuff in the package. It's like Christmas. "Oh cool, a package... huh, I wonder what this thing does." -stare at it for 5 minutes "Oh yeeeeaaah, now I remember. Gonna have to put a label on that one..."
So, what how does the USB stick show up on a computer when plugged into a normal USB port? Is each image a partition? Is it formatted with a partition that has img files on it? What would happen if you just used something like 'dd' to clone a floppy to a USB drive, would the emulator recognize that? Is there anyway you can clone a floppy to a USB drive with this device, then take that drive and put it in another computer and make an image of the entire drive and post that image online some where can download and look at it? That would be awesome!
+Kris Occhipinti The USB shows up as "FLPPY0" and you can read/write to disk0 just as you would a normal floppy but just on the USB. For the other slots, you need to use a program or you use the computer itself to write to the other disks after selecting them. Each 'disk' is not a partition. They are specially formatted by sectors on the USB that the emulator recognizes. Using dd will not work, the emulator is not looking for that kind of disk image. It is not a big partition with img files on it--that would be FAR TOO AMAZING to be a thing that happens. :P If you have more questions, I can answer them more. I use these things at work a ton.
Sad to hear that laptop was broken. About the Chinese language problem, there are actually many Chinese fans of your channel (including me)! We are glad to help!
if I had to guess, I'd say something is wrong with some capacitors somewhere along the line. An old monitor of mine acted exactly the same, running for several minutes and then shutting off. It might be worth taking the thing apart and looking for some bloated capacitors. Replacing them is dirt cheap.
I really like using these GOTEK FDD emulators. I think I have four of them now :) My oldest PC is a 386, so I they all support 1.4 MB. Selecting an image on the GOTEK and then putting it into a modern PC, I always get the very first image, so that's a bit odd. But yea, it's a great product no doubt. You can use two in one machine, works with VGA Copy for example. I haven't found software that can read a 1000 image USB, they only read the first 100. Now I wish someone would make a CD/DVD emulator that supports ISO and BIN/CUE images as well as analogue CD Audio outputs :)
Long time viewer here, just wanna point my experience with digital interfaces to you: STOP and STEP are two totally different signals, I wouldn't cross the two. STOP is a signal that tells the motor and data to stop all operations STEP is to step over to the next track or 'cylinder' (don't quote me on this, it's been a long time) just as a safe measure I would cut that trace, but if it works - more power to you! good video either way, very informative!
+ionbladezofficial Also just seen the rest of the video, the step signal probably fed something to the drive, and the drive may have spit some voltage back to one of the data lines causing the effect you are experiencing with the laptop. I'm sure there's a diode or resistor somewhere that might need looking at.
PRO TIP: Google makes a translate app for iOS and android that can use your camera to convert images of foreign text to English. I use this to figure stuff like this out sometimes, works great.
Asians use these drives for old embroidering machines and/or keyboards. There's a ton of different versions available, even with just the connector facing the other side. You'll probably even find one with the 26-pin connector on AliExpress. I upgraded my old Tektronix scope this way. Had to get a 2,5" floppy emulator which - sadly - can only work with 1 virtual floppy per USB drive. But it works perfectly.
For anyone that wants to see more on this type of device, there's another RU-vidr by the name of 'PhilsComputerLab' that has a couple of retro videos on it. As for software, he did mention an English program that would be able to format and manage the disk images as well. It's a bit quirky, from what I saw, but it seems more convenient for batch images.
I know how these kinds of projects go and how frustrating it can be when you run into unexpected problems. My only advice is don't get too discouraged and don't quit! Take a break if you need, but I encourage you to keep going and solve the issue with the power supply. You're doing a great job and I feel you're 75% there. Just a little bit more!
Boy you weren't kidding about those instructions. I just installed one of these in a Gateway 2000, and if it weren't for tutorials like the ones from Phil's Computer Lab I'd be lost. I did hit a snag where I had a bad floppy ribbon cable, so at first it didn't work. But I was able to fix it. This is going to be a great substitute for using actually floppies I think.
+GRAHAMINATOR Yeah, most of us would. I wouldn't even have checked on the Internet where the screws are. I would have probably pried it open with crowbar turning it into a piece of junk in the process and then I would have thrown it away. That's probably why all the machines I've attempted to open ended up in the garbage.
Check out +PhilsComputerLab. He has a few of those and has a tutorial on them. Search "GOTEK Floppy emulator PhilsComputerLab" and you will find his video
Really like these cool side projects :) I have an old Toshiba T1200xe from the late 80's, which also has this 26 pin interface, and after looking up drive replacements for it, it appears no-one has figured out a way to convert the interface to more common formats, though by looking it up, maybe there is hope given the large amount of people in this situation.
do your homework next time: there is a great software alternative for the gotek: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-taFP1J_lZBI.html also, you can fairly easily flash the firmware for your particular computer or buy an already modified unit (I have a version of Gotek modded for use with my Atari St - works like a charm)
It was a standard single density floppy drive, not a high density one. This could possibly be your problem? This is coming from my father, who used to work on them
Even if your initial idea of making the floppy drive emulator work on your retro laptops didn't work out, your video was still enjoyable and interesting to watch! it's so cool to see cable adapters made from scratch, especially with proprietary connectors :D Keep the good work up, your many fans appreciate every bit of your effort!
Pays 30 bucks extra and still has to make an interface while a simple wiring switch of the FD HD was enough to make it DD in the first place. Facepalm!
+Dennis McCarson It's actually a good practice to get into. It not only keeps the pieces organized, but when you have to put it back together, all your screws and stuff are in the order you will need them. Just start at the end and work back to the beginning.
I'm definitely going to do it now, it's one of those things that you don't think about, and it's so simple and after you see it you feel instant regret that it took you this long to figure it out.
Good to just upload the video instead of trying to push it to perfection :) I think most tv shows and youtube channels try too hard to hide all the problems ;)
4 disks to install Doom, 17 to install Duke Nuke'em 3D.... nope, don't miss that at all. Backing up your entire hard-drive using PKZip or ARJ, only to have 1 disk go bad and the entire backup rendered garbage.... priceless.
I was lucky enough to get Falcon 3.0 on CD. Never really got to play it much, though, and the sound card we had in that machine wasn't recognized by the program (TYVM, Windows Sound System and your lack of SoundBlaster emulation...). Maybe one of these days I'll put it into a dosbox setup.
evknucklehead Sometimes when playing Falcon 3.0 I used to choose the PC speaker instead of my SoundBlaster card. Many of the sounds were not good, but the radio chatter sounded more realistic through the tinny PC speaker lol.
I just picked up one of these for my 486 project, and so far, it works great! I was able to find the English version of the software, in the event that someone needs that ...
I wouldn't rule out that the emulator itself broke your laptop. These things are not supposed to go in those machines actually. Also, made in China, so it's to be expected.
+אולדסקול nowadays EVERYTHING is made in china, even the top-brand stuff you'll probably claim works much better! it used to be like "oh made in chine, it must be crap" but nowadays that's not so much the case anymore, lenovo laptops are brilliant... made in china. samsung phones are also really high quality... made in china. even the iphone is made in china!
Factories in China offer different tiers of quality assurance, material quality and manufacturing environments. When you buy something on the cheap (yes, $30 for this is damn cheap) you're getting the lower end of all of those. Sometimes that's enough, but if you buy something that's supposed to cost a lot more (like this drive) and put it into a retro computer from your collection, you shouldn't be surprised things go wrong.
As easy as all this sounds... It's unlikely that the floppy emulator actually broke the Tandy 1400LT. Those old 1400s drop dead rather regularly, usually because things like capacitors in the power supply unit die. Floppy drives and floppy emulators are pretty passive anyways. It's much more likely for a faulty PSU to fry the drives, or emulator, than the the drive/emulator will screw up the PSU. Considering the symptoms, where the computer will run for a short while, then shut off, it's likely the fault of dead and/or dying capacitors.
At time of writing this comment, this video is almost 3 years old. Would like to see this topic taken up again - in a more extensive survey of converting various retro computers to use modern solid state storage device. This looks to be a fairly broad topic as there is the matter of converting old computer that had spinning harddrive to use an SSD. This involves the various retro hardrive interfaces (which ones are supported with modern adapters to SSD). Then there are the various retro removable storage devices (floppy drives, perhaps even tape drives) and what options are there to adapt them to USB sticks and/or compact flash memory cards, etc. Yeah, this could be a very big topic and take several episodes to cover it well. Doesn't seem anyone has taken it on yet. The 8 Bit Guy probably has the best expertise to address it.
I just watched the Gameboy pocket backlight video you did about a year or two ago. And in the video, you mentioned that you would do a video installing a backlight into a GBA, and I wanted to know if you ever got around to doing it.
Wow that's vey impressive. You made it so far! Please don't leave us hanging. I would have given up at the whole 24 pin adapter part. That must have been annoying and very time consuming to do. Sorry to hear it didn't work out.
