Fried Gotek? What can I do?
 

Yesterday I was testing my A500 repair and plugged in my Gotek to give it a go. Unfortunately for me this A500 mobo doesn't have the usual white socket for the floppy power connector to never plug it the wrong way, so I plugged it the wrong way after looking at photos online that showed the red cable to the left (moral of the story kids: never trust cable colors).

Anyway, I realized right after powering it up and reversed the cable and it worked again. Cortex gave me one of those "FE Init error" messages, so I went and reflashed it. I tried it again and everything seemed to work.

Cue this morning, and the USB stick doesn't work when I put it on the PC. I find that to be odd since it was working last night. Device shows up in USB list but no disk ever shows up. It blinks weirdly.
I try it in the Gotek, it briefly flashes "001", when I try to change to "000", it doesn't work. I restart the computer and it now displays "---".

I take another USB stick, put it in the Gotek, and it is now stuck at "---". Green LED comes up for a while but computer is acting like when you have no unit plugged to the internal floppy connector (taking a while to show the WB hand).
With no USB stick in the unit, still "---". I insert a stick and nothing happens, still "---"

I reflashed it a couple of times. First time it somehow got write protected again. I removed that. Both flashings were succesful. I also tried the "reset" jumper thing.

The thing is still stuck doing nothing.

Now, I am not surprised this died after plugging power the wrong way, but I wonder if there's anything I can do before I throw it to the garbage :( I am confused by the fact that after I plugged it the wrong way and corrected my error, both the Gotek and the USB were working fine, but only this morning they started to fail. I also am confused by the fact that I can still flash the thing, tat whole part is working, but maybe some component broke in the way that I can change, even though it's mostly SMD caps that I don't think I can replace.

I can discard computer fault since I tried with the regular floppy disk and it works just fine.

Anyway, any help appreciated, and may this be a cautionary tale for everyone regarding these units, they seem to have absolutely no protection against shorts on the power input.

I recall something about a "reset" by holding both GoTek buttons for a time. Worth a shot, I didn't see it mentioned above.

Hmm I did try to do that, but it didn't seem to do anything :(

If I keep messing with up and down buttons rapidly mine freezes on the slot number it was last on. Hard reset or a swap of anther usb stick somehow resets the frozen glitch.

Holding down both buttons didnt do anything for me when it froze.

It seems to be acting the same way regardless of what stick I put in it.
This guy seemed to accidentally have done the same as me:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=75535
So I might have sent 12V straight to the USB port and friend my stick. That doesn't explain why it worked for a while last night, or why the Gotek still refuses to work.
Also as I said it is acting like if you have no floppy connected or a DFO:BAD situation.

I might try connecting it to my AMiga with a hard drive to see how it shows up in WB. But maybe there is some component I can actually fix here before I go out and buy another Gotek.

The guy on the thread above seems to have solved is issue, and having a power cable only with 5V seems like a good idea for these things since they are built this crappy way, but I don't see how that solves anything.

Ok things I tested:

Power entering the Gotek. 5.a little bit volts.



I thought the regulator could be fried, but it's receiving 5 and outputting 3.26 which I guess is close enough to 3.3V



Output at USB port is now 5V



I really don't know what could be broken here. Could it be the crystal? I have an 8Mhz one lying about that I could use.



Flashing still works. I flashed it and erased it a bunch of times, but it just doesn't react.

I tried a different data cable which I had not tried, same result.

Workbench shows DF0:??? on the A600 I plugged it into to test as a second Amiga.



Really out of ideas here.

:confused :guru

Dont know how you'll get this fixed. You probably have tried already, but have you tried redumping the selector on another stick?

Or Using another selector.adf incase your one is not working properly.

I backup up my selector immediately when I first got my gotek.

I think it's just your USB memory. I did the same thing to my first Gotek (because Amstrad reversed the polarity on their floppy connector) and while it did fry my USB stick, the Gotek survived.

Same here, also an A500, also plugged cable in reverse. Gotek survived, USB stick did not.

But I already tried several other USBs and none of them work, it's rather odd.
Shouldn't it say H-C if it was working fine? Also it shouldn't show as DF0:??? when you have a stick in or no stick in it at all. drive is acting like when you plug a broken disk drive in there.

I turn mine on and it remains on the last slot number played.

I then can go back to "000" with the down button.

If I turn the power supply off and on, it will start at 000, then say "H-C"

What if you have no stick in it? what does it say? How does it show in WB when you have no stick in it? does the Amiga take a long time to boot if you have no stick in it?

Stays at "---" the whole time with a Kickstart v1.3 image on the screen.

Ok, did the green light flash for a while before the Amiga showed the KS screen? Does that screen take longer to show up than when you have a stick in it?



Finally, what about after loading Workbench, without a usb stick on it?what does Workbench show for DF0: icon-wise, if anything at all?

- Yes Green LED flashes then goes off. followed by the kick screen. (Without USB plugged in)

- When USB inserted there is more Green light Flashing from the LED, then during loading slot of "000" I see H-C. As soon as the selector loads the green light stops flashing, and I see the selector launcher on the screen.

- I tried load Workbench v3.1 rev 40.42 (1994)(Commodore)(M10)(Disk 2 of 6)(Workbench)[!].adf, put it in slot 001 and it won't load, just sits on Kickstart screen. I have never loaded workbench since Ive had my Gotek on my A500 before, So I may be doing something wrong there? I only use games.

If you have Kickstart 1.3 you cannot run Workbench 3.1, you need to rn Workbench 1.3

In any case, thanks for what you told me so far, it might be that I am just being extremely unlucky with USB sticks, I will test some more today, because I cannot find anything wrong with the Gotek so far and it's acting in the same way you describe, only that when I insert a stick, it doesn't flash the green light again (I can see a VERY DIM flash constantly on it when there's no USB though, I guess this is normal and the Gotek just checking if you inserted a new USB?)

If you manage to se what it shows on WB with no USB attached that would be most helpful, if you can't, don' t worry!

Am I just paranoid because I never insert or remove the USB stick with my console turned on?

Fried Gotek? What can I do?
 

Don't worry, just make sure the Gotek isn't accessing the disk to avoid corruption and it is possible to remove/change sticks without powering down.
Also if you set all ADF's file attributes to read only, I think that is as good as write protecting them too, but I could be wrong.


Well again, I was wrong! i went through a load of sticks and finally found a couple that worked, so the Gotek is alright after all like you said! I guess the voltage regulator saved it from death but since as said somewhere the 5V line goes straight to the USB without protection, it fried the USB. How hard would it be to add protection to that circuit?

Still don't know why the USB worked right after the issue but died next morning only

Thanks as always for all the help guys. Now I need to finish up my A500 repair to see if everything works alright or if it needs further repair. Every time I fix something, something else breaks, these Amigas are like Pandora's boxes :mad

Awesome! I couldn't offer much help but I was cheering for ya. Good news.

Awesome news Akira. I think the Pandora box might be the gotek not the amiga.

Now hopefully we can figure out the issue wether sharing a selector.adf between Amigas actually work without reselecting each game again.