Gotek Firmware Update

[Carlito Roby]

TheHxC Floppy Emulator firmware for Gotek is the enhanced firmware for the Gotek Floppy Emulators replacing floppy disk drives on old computers, keyboards/samplers/synths and CNC machines to use modern USB sticks instead of the old floppy disks.

In HxC firmware these "numbers" are called slots, a sort of "frequently used" index list. You can assign via config file an specific number position to an image file, and then select and load it via frontal buttons for easy and fast manipulation, just like you do with normal firmware.

Ofc HxC firmware is pretty flexible and you aren't limited to that. You also can navigate via firmware menu and load any file directly to emulated drive at any time. But for that functionality, you would like to add an extra I2C LCD display kit to your Gotek, so you can navigate a complete menu, and not just numbers and beep codes.

Nope. HxC firmware will convert your board in an HxC floppy emulator unit... Which isn't bad at all, because you will access to many nice features not available with the normal Gotek/IPCAS firmware, like using a normal USB flash volume and standard image files instead a non-standard USB pendrive drive with 999 partitions on it, one for each virtual floppy.

I added some pin headers to the program port of the PCB of the Gotek.

Got a USB TTL-232R-3V3 and rearanged the pins to fit the new pins.

Got the account created and flashed the drive with HxC bootloader firmware.

Updated the firmware with a usb stick.

Put the mode in "indexed" mode by placing the HXCSDFE.CFG file in the root of the stick.

Created a few floppy images with the HxCFloppyEmulator V.2.1.5.0 firmware.

put them on the usb stick with DSKA0000.HFE and DSKA0001.HFE and so on.

Put the gotek in my SS7 machine and crossed my fingers while powering it on.

I just ordered one of these Gotek devices and am about to grab a license for the firmware to make the HxC firmware work with it once it arrives. Only this time, this is going into a relative no-name CP/M box with two DSDD 96tpi 5 1/4" floppy drives, a Multitech MIC-504. Only thing is, you DO know this company by its newer name, Acer.

If this works like I hope it does, I want to see about getting an actual HxC so I can replace both drives with just one device. Would be nice to have "disks" from the same virtual flip file on the same storage device to grab from without swapping devices.

I got my device after a few weeks' worth of waiting. It flashed easily, but the initial issue is that the machine wouldn't start, as in it wouldn't get into POST. However, other things in my life were ganging up on me, so I had to table it until yesterday or so.

Got the machine to the point where it would power up. About the only issue I ran into was due to the fact I created images on a PC with a 1.2MB floppy (the 96tpi DSDD diskettes the old machine created and used only spin at 300RPM as opposed to 360RPM). As such, it recorded the bitrate in the image file as 300kbps as opposed to the actual 250kbps that the MIC-504's uDP765 wanted from its slower-spinning drives. I hex-edited the value in the file to reflect this, and it worked!

The Gotek images apparently have an option whereby you can also put an I2C LCD panel on it along with an additional button much like the normal HxC devices have, leaving only the ability to emulate two devices in the same bay rather than just one as the remaining thing that the device cannot support.

- Fix attempt of the "diymore.cc" OLED screens : OLED init screen delay

menu option added.

(Note : Please avoid these "diymore.cc" screens until i got an idea

what is the root cause of the issue.)

I installed HxC on my Gotek over the weekend as the default firmware didn't like the PPC640, but HxC worked first great. It just took about 4 attempts to flash the box as I had to hold the Usb serial device at an odd angle to get it to work.

Hi, I've bought a gotek drive some time ago and I flashed some firmware on it to use it on my amiga ... except that never happened. Now I'd like to roll back to the original firmware for testing proposes, but I can't find it anywhere ?

I don't think there are any "original" firmware out there. If you are already able to flash the device, you may try flashing FlashFloppy which provides an extended set of features and could be configured for different purposes.

There's no public dump of the stock firmware that I know of, since the Chinese set the protection bits on the microcontroller so that you can't dump it from the device you bought, and they happen to sell various models with different features (and prices) which in essence are just software limitations - they'd rather not have you buy the cheap device and flash the 'expensive' firmware on it, so binaries are not available.

That said, the Gotek is intended for the industrial market. They don't care about us retro computer enthusiasts, and in light of the alternative firmwares that have been developed with our hobby in mind, the stock firmware is kinda crap anyway.

Primarily it seems to be a replacement for the Cortex Amiga floppy emulation firmware, but since the author has begun to add PC floppy support in the latest release, I thought some of you guys might be interested too.

Installed FlashFloppy on my Gotek, was easy enough. More info about the flashing procedure here. Tried both using an USB-TTL adapter + stm32flash, and a straight USB A male-to-male cable + DfuSe (hint: if you don't want to register to download DfuSe, there's a download link in post #11 here). Both methods worked perfectly.

It should be mentioned that at least I couldn't find any images of the original firmware, and it seems like it can't be dumped from the Gotek either, so the procedure seems to be irreversible. If you however like me, got a Cortex flashed drive you have no use for, you've got nothing to lose, you can always go back to Cortex if you want.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

PS. If I upload RAR, it is a 16-bit DOS RAR Version 2.50.

Giving this thing uses the HxC format, and makes use of many stuff discovered by Jeff first about Gotek hardware, along with its possibilities, you should be thankful to him. If wasn't by him, and him alone, you wouldn't even have this unsupported clone, having to conform with gotek's built in firmware limitations.

In any case, bootloader license is cheap, and by using HxC firmware the owner also has access to unlimited support and ways to make its device to work with his/her specific piece of hardware. If you use this thing, you're alone. Is something fails, or you can't make the thing work with your specific equipment, you will have to debug the firmware and discover what failed by yourself. For you, who probably have generic PC stuff, would be unworth... But for many of us, who have specific pieces of hardware, the extra support from an expert in floppy controllers comes very handy.

In any case, is fine if you don't want to pay for, or like HxC... But ffs, don't be disrespectful with other's work. Thanks

You said it. For you... And is a damn severe flaw if you ask me... Just days ago other user here reported fscking his USB key by writting that non standard format on it. I can add some related flaws, as the original only supports MFM 720k and 1.44MB. If you have booter 360K images it will be a no go. It also doesn't support any other boot sector format than the standard DOS bootsectors, so you can't write booter, or even *nix bootdisk images on it.

You can... Thanks to Jeff and his work in the HxC. He published many of his notes about floppy tech in his forum and documented part of his closed source work and made it public. These foss clones exist thanks to him, and all the people who subsidized his work by buying his products.

PS: Just an observation. Your way of thinking is the cause skilled people don't wanting to release any of their work which can be useful to the community as OSS or FOSS. Skilled people and devs don't like fscking freeloaders. If you like FOSS because "free as beer", don't come to whine to forums how do you like free as beer works and criticize other's paid work. Just enjoy it.

I flashed my Gotek last night and added an OLED display. I put one img file on my USB key and it shows up on the OLED display but when I try to access it on my PC it says the A drive is not ready. Any ideas?

Wow the author of the firmware just read my mind, recently i was wondering if it already existed and things about reverse engineering the firmware to understand it behavior and create my own.

But since it is already done it is awesome.

HxC did a really good job with his firmware, but the only flaw is that isn't open source so it rely on one person, if he decides that he is done with it and abandon his project, all the users could suffer with it, now since there is one open source alternative even if the original coder decide that he is done with the project, more people can continue maintaining the code.

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