Gotek floppy emulator - first test

[Yulquen74]

I got my 2 Gotek kits today, and I managed to do some brief testing tonight.
Both came with the 1.05a firmware already installed.

I formatted a Sandisk Cruzer 32GB stick as it was available for trashing,
as FAT32 as per user manual, and also downloaded and copied the selector.adf and some other adf's to it.

I disconnected the internal floppy of my A500+ system, and connected the
power and floppy cable that came with the kit (bog standard cables) to the
A500+ mainboard.

After powerup, everything appeared fine, the selector booted, and I was able to configure it, and then select adf images using the buttons.

But when booting to Workbench, I noticed some odd behaviour. The Gotek generates a lot of "disk" activity, and after it has settled, it idles for a few second, then the disk icon disappears followed by new disk access for several seconds and diskicon re-appering, and this never stops. Its like when you eject and insert a regular floppies in few second intervals.

I also tried to copy files from the Gotek drive to RAM: to compare the speed against a regular floppy (DF2, and the result was not exactly impressive.

The regular floppy drive copied all the files from an AmigaDOS disk in 52 seconds, while the Gotek did it in 135 seconds (same disk image), including me having to acknowledge 2 AmigaDOS requesters ala "You MUST insert disk ... back into DF0:" during the copy process.

Both my Goteks behaves the same. The only jumper closed is S0.

Can anyone enlighten me to whether this is normal behaviour for this floppy emulator, or if I have forgotten something?


Thanks in advance for replies.

[Jope]

No, they shouldn't eject and insert the disk all the time.. Does the selector display blink or is it solid?

[Yulquen74]

The display is solid.

However, after some more testing today it seems clear what the problem is.
If you have more than one external floppy drive like I did, the Gotek messes up.
If I leave only one or none external drive, it appears to function normally.

Doing new speed tests, the Gotek copied the files of the floppy image to RAM in
56 seconds, a tad slower than the floppy drive that completed in 52 seconds.

Doing adf ripping, the Gotek took 41 seconds to rip a disk image to RAM, against
42 seconds for a real disk drive.

Another small issue is that if the USB stick is not present at powerup, it behaves as if the drive is disconnected, causing some seconds of delay during startup and DF0??? icon on WB.

This endures on every boot until a USB stick has been inserted at least once, then all subsequent boots are as normal even with USB stick ejected.

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by Yulquen74

Another small issue is that if the USB stick is not present at powerup, it behaves as if the drive is disconnected, causing some seconds of delay during startup and DF0??? icon on WB.

This endures on every boot until a USB stick has been inserted at least once, then all subsequent boots are as normal even with USB stick ejected.

It's normal, they all do that.