exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

No, i power down the ST before switching from the floppy to the Gotek. I do love these challenges!

Just thinking logically, it must be a wire on the floppy cable causing it, it can't be pin 10 or 16 as these are isolated via a switch and pulling the cable makes it work. It does the same with the power connected or not too.

It must be one of the following which is stopping it write to the Gotek...

Pin 8 Index
Pin 18 Direction
Pin 20 Step
Pin 22 Write Data
Pin 24 Write Enable
Pin 26 Track 0
Pin 28 Write Protect
Pin 30 Read Data
Pin 32 Head Select

My money is on one of three, I might just strip the wire from pin 22, 24 and 28 and connect each one in turn to eliminate the culprit and then just use a switch on the one, hopefully its not all three!

My thinking it may be be pin 28 is in the desktop it comes up and says you can not save the desktop because write protect is enabled.

Hope that makes sense.

Ok got it to work by cutting the cable to pin 28, I will put this on a switch so it will connect if I want to use the floppy :)

Success, i'll post a pic of the outside so you can see it. Thank you for all your help too!

I wonder if gotec doesn't open collector the WP pin in that case, because there should be no need to isolate it as they are connected on the ST by default anyway...

Interesting question, i must admit I search high and low to see if someone had done this before and the only real reference was the guy who did it on his Amiga by just putting a switch on pin 10.

With the switches in place it just reverts back to the floppy drive so if I ever want to install a B drive I can just plug it in the back.

My next thing will be to buy one of your memory upgrade kits i think!

Does gotek as A: and a normal drive as B: work ?

yes it worked that way too, but wanted it this way so I could add another B drive later if I wanted. :)

A few photos of the finished project :)


Side view with the buttons for using the Gotek


Rear view showing the switches, one for power and one for the pins to switch my preferred boot device.


Top down showing the screen for the Gotek.

Thank you for all your info to support this one, just need to upgrade the memory :)