exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I installed a Gotek with FlashFloppy in my ST a while ago. Today, I got my SF314 external disk drive working with my other ST that still has a regular internal disk drive. Now I wanted to attach the SF314 to the ST that has the Gotek installed inside. But to my disappointment, that didn't work.

When double-clicking the Drive B icon, the motor on the SF314 spins up (and the led lights up) but Gotek is also doing a single track seek (I have a piezo speaker installed which gives me audible feedback) and after a second or two, I get "Drive B: is not responding.".

I remember that before, when I didn't have the SF314 connected, opening drive B would should drive A's contents. This means that the Gotek is somehow hogging the second drive. Does anybody know how to disable that 'feature'?

The floppy connector on the Atari should be routing the drive A in SF314 as a drive B through the YM2149 chip (ie pin 5 in the floppy cable if I remember correctly to pin 19 on the YM2149).

DoG wrote: 01 Sep 2018 22:57 The floppy connector on the Atari should be routing the drive A in SF314 as a drive B through the YM2149 chip (ie pin 5 in the floppy cable if I remember correctly).

So what you are saying is that I have to modify the ST and modifying the SF314 won't work?

It should already work. If the drive in SF314 is set to D0 (drive A) it should be seen as drive B in your Atari STF. It's already rerouted internally in the Atari. Have you tried with two real floppy drives instead of the Gotek one?

DoG wrote: 01 Sep 2018 23:08 It should already work. If the drive in SF314 is set to D0 (drive A) it should be seen as drive B in your Atari STF. It's already rerouted internally in the Atari. Have you tried with two real floppy drives instead of the Gotek one?

Yes, when there's a real floppy drive in the ST, the SF314 works just fine as drive B. I really think that the Gotek is doing drive B related stuff from the same cable. As I said, both the Gotek and the SF314 become active when I open drive B from the OS.

Yup. Isn't the gotek made as a pc floppy connector and the atari drives is Shugart connected? I solved it temporarily by removing MO (motor) jumper on the gotek. Didn't work that great though. It kind of work. I had to switch the power on/off on the SF314 to get it to work. But I had some other troubles also with the USB stick so I don't know if it was related.

Maybe desolder pin 12 on the gotek might do the trick?

http://old.pinouts.ru/HD/InternalDisk_pinout.shtml

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. But I must admit they confused me a little. I think a lot of this stuff is about incorrect strapping etc. But my STFM is unmodified (except for the installed Gotek), the SF314 is original as well.

Given the fact that using a physical floppy drive internally AND externally works perfect, indicates that this must be a Gotek specific issue.

I was just re-reading Gotek for Atari ST instructions and I noticed that the motor jumper wasn't there. So I removed it from my Gotek and now the problem seems to have disappeared. I can run programs from both drives, the Gotek and the SF314.

I hope that this is the fix and no issues arise but I will have to do more experiments to know for sure.

DoG wrote: 01 Sep 2018 23:55 Yup. Isn't the gotek made as a pc floppy connector and the atari drives is Shugart connected? I solved it temporarily by removing MO (motor) jumper on the gotek. Didn't work that great though. It kind of work. I had to switch the power on/off on the SF314 to get it to work. But I had some other troubles also with the USB stick so I don't know if it was related.

Maybe desolder pin 12 on the gotek might do the trick?

http://old.pinouts.ru/HD/InternalDisk_pinout.shtml

Ugh, I was talking about how I say that the motor jumper was off in some instruction but you actually already told me so. I should read more carefully.

Now that the motor jumper is off, I'm experiencing some weird things.

- Sometimes the ST won't boot from the Gotek with the SF314 powered on.
- After formatting a Gotek image from GEM, I get a 0 bytes available message. When switching to another image using the buttons on the gotek, it is shown as empty.

I can read and write disks with no problem however. So probably there's still some disturbance between the Gotek and the SF314 going on.

I can live with the current situation for now but I still hope to find out how to separate the two better.

I am having similar problems, after updating the Gotek with drive B (external sf414) connected I get ERROR LBA change test failed ! Write Issue?

Russ

Don't forget if you're using FlashFloppy firmware (And I'd suggest it is well worth doing so) there is a config file called FF.CFG that can be placed in the root of your USB stick that can override default FlashFloppy values, and write them to the firmware, just by powering on the Gotek with the file in the root. After that, the new values are written, including the interface type i.e. Shugart, ibmpc, ibmpc-hdout, akai-s950 etc.

May be worth a read, the detail is here: https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wi ... ation-File

Better that, than reach for the soldering iron!

FYI I have a Datel external case, which is basically a cable from the floppy external port to the drive (I'm gonna map out the pin connections later, see about making another cable, just for kicks :) ), and the floppy drive in that is set to DS0.

This works externally on a 1040 STF, so clearly the ST is doing the part of deciding which is drive A and drive B, despite both being set to DS0. I expect some sort of cable select is being done electronically, a bit like in the PC where drive A and B are both set to DS1, but a twist in the cable between the connectors determines the drive lettering.

By swapping out to a Gotek, also set to DS0, it worked fine as a drive B. My earlier thread is here: https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewt ... =10#p16753

BTW, I do not use the motor on jumper, just DS0 and nothing else.