...And so it's time to replace my df0 unit... gotek or another floppy drive?

[Marty_McFly]

Hi guys,
I think it's time to replace the 30 years old df0 internal unit of my Amiga 500. I noted that in the last times has a growing number of problems on reading floppies but above all on recognizing the inserting of the same floppies. I can exclude that is a problem of the floppies because some of them start some times without any problem, other times the drive stop itself after the boot reading attempt, other times the drive finds a great number of RW errors.
So I am evaluating the right choice: do you advise me to buy and use as df0 a gotek or another floppy drive?
Ok I read several topics about gotek, and I could also evaluate to buy both of them if necessary, using the floppy drive as df0 and gotek as external unit switching them as logical df0 units through the several solutions sold online (eg. The amigastore switcher).
Which solution do you agree with?
Thanks for any reply. I would appreciate especially the feedback of those who already use gotek and can review advantages and disadvantages as df0 or df1 unit with the switcher solution.
Regards.

[Jope]

If it's a thick chinon, you can clean the heads, lube the rail for the head carriage with a very small drop of sewing machine oil and carefully open + clean the disk change switch. :-)

The switch is the most painful of these to do.

[Marty_McFly]

Mmmm the current internal unit of my amiga results to be a mitsumi d359t5 drive. But looking on Internet it seems to be a floppy drive native for pc? mmmm its quite strange, coild it be that my amiga drive was repaired in the past (I can't remember for sure) and the drive replaced with a pc compatible and modified model?

[ptyerman]

Also a capacitor on the motor board can fail with age on floppy drives causing read/write errors. It's usually the largest capacitor on the board and close to the rotor so easy to spot. If it's something your capable of doing it's worth changing that, if not, don't throw away the drive because someone would be able to repair and make use of it.

[Marty_McFly]

Thank you for the reply. I supposed the same as possible. If it is not a problem of the unit it could be a problem of some component of the mboard dedicated to the floppies management and recognizing.
I appreciate your tip, but the help of some photo and directives would be fundamental in my case. Although I made some welding and a few of little electronic repairing in the past, I am not so skilled to find it in a "blind way". And without any electric/circuit diagram I would prefer to avod making more damages...
Apart from that, I have not references for a good Amiga repairing center, I only collected bad and bad experiences in Italy.

What I can say is that the unit for the great part of loading attempts reads the floppies without any problem (eg. a WBench floppy disk), some other few times (but the number is growing in the last months) it seems not to be able to read in a smooth way the disks, showing every X blocks some RW error. Some other times (at the moment still rare) totally ignores the inserting of some working disks and the AMIGA logo (hand with the disk) returns on the screen.

Anyway, for the moment I will not throw away the drive, I prefer to store it and buy another one. I found on amigastore this:

http://amigastore.eu/en/476-internal...amiga-500.html

but I do not understand why they describe it as brand new and after specify that is "refurbished" in excellent condition

By the way, my main doubt remains between the replacement of a floppy drive and a Gotek unit, trying to make a summary of advantages:
- with Gotek I would have a sterminated library of ADF files ready for loading on a usb pen (I would surely buy the HxC version);
- for games made of more floppies I would need in any case of the external floppy units;
- with Gotek I would have less risks of damaged floppies or drives;
- with Gotek + the dedicated switcher I could use the df1 floppy unit as df0;
- other considerations?

Frankly, I hope only that Gotek does not give problems of any kind with the use of ACA500plus.

[Amiga1992]

I would definitely get a Gotek, with the new FlashFloppy firmware, a healthy race between HxC and FlashFloppy has spurred, which gives us users a spoiled choice of new options basically every week. It's a great time to ditch real floppy drives in favor of cheap Goteks and go all digital.

Also as you said, you could have a switch and have both, and use what's needed when needed. I intend to do this soon on my A500 probably, as it is very easy. Heck I think I might get a second Gotek just to do my A600 too. Since both have working floppy drives, I see no reason to remove the drive yet, as I use disks from time to time.

Oldschool floppy drives are great if you have them lying around and you, every now and then, have a need to use a real floppy (for example if you have originals and like to play off the disks), but there is no way I would buy any new or "new" unit nowadays, as it is a waste of money for a device that uses media that eventually will run out and, with every passing day, it is more prone to degradation-caused errors.

[Marty_McFly]

Originally Posted by Akira

I would definitely get a Gotek, with the new FlashFloppy firmware, a healthy race between HxC and FlashFloppy has spurred, which gives us users a spoiled choice of new options basically every week. It's a great time to ditch real floppy drives in favor of cheap Goteks and go all digital.

for an use as df0 any Gotek models or online store to suggest?
A link to the latest firmware type/name and version would be appreciated.
Thank you

[supaduper]

Cheap Gotek
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-5-Floppy...EAAOSwQItUH8Vh

Flash Floppy
https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy

[Marty_McFly]

Originally Posted by supaduper

Cheap Gotek
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-5-Floppy...EAAOSwQItUH8Vh

Flash Floppy
https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy

Thank you for the links above. Unfortunately that seller has a long score of negative feedbacks on ebay therefore I will look around for other sellers. Meanwhile, could you confirm me if the model you linked is the same sold by amigastore (link below) ?

http://amigastore.eu/en/323-usb-flop...tor-gotek.html

So all of these models can accept the flash floppy firmware, right?

Thank you very much.

[supaduper]

Originally Posted by Marty_McFly

Thank you for the links above. Unfortunately that seller has a long score of negative feedbacks on ebay therefore I will look around for other sellers. Meanwhile, could you confirm me if the model you linked is the same sold by amigastore (link below) ?

http://amigastore.eu/en/323-usb-flop...tor-gotek.html

So all of these models can accept the flash floppy firmware, right?

Thank you very much.

all Chinese sellers have some neg
I always use this seller for my Goteks and they have never let me down in 5 years , its just the wait for them.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SFR1M44-U1...53.m1438.l2649

trust me they are all made by practically the same manufacturer, if its got two buttons an LED and same shape It will be a Gotek
They all accept the Firmware`s out there ,FF, HxC, Cortex.

[Amiga1992]

All Goteks are the same, don't be fooled by "Amiga Gotek" auctions, these things are meant to be cheap (USD25 tops)

[Marty_McFly]

Ok thanks again.
Please just a last question: supposing I use gotek as df0 and I would like to save my state in a specific game eg. Dungeon Master. The game would ask me "Please insert an empty disk in df0 to save your game". But in df0 I have the Gotek. So in a such situation the gotek would allow me to swap the virtual adf images (the game.adf with the savedisk.adf) like we do with WinUAE, or is not possible to do a such operation in the middle of its use?

[Amiga1992]

Yes you can defintely swap disks at any time, using its buttons and 3 digit LED interface. You just need to know in which number slot what you want is.

[Marty_McFly]

Ok thank you again.