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Seeking advice using gotek in a Compact Portable II

H

Haemogoblin

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I’m trying to restore a none functional Compaq Portable II, I’ve got as far as getting it to post, but it is seeking a boot disk. All the disks I’ve tried don’t work and I was wondering whether I could plug in a gotek floppy emulator? From what I’ve read on here, so long as the image on the Gotek is 360kb, the computer will see the gotek like any other 5.25” disk drive?
 
The big asterisk with Goteks is the stock firmware is bad and kind of useless for general purpose retro computing, so nearly all the discussion you’ll see about them in forums like this assumes the Gotek has been upgraded with an alternate third party firmware, usually FlashFloppy:

github.com

GitHub - keirf/flashfloppy: Floppy drive emulator for Gotek hardware

Floppy drive emulator for Gotek hardware. Contribute to keirf/flashfloppy development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

So… assuming that’s what you’re asking about, a Gotek modified with FlashFloppy, then yes, they make perfectly good substitutes for most Shugart/PC interface floppy drives and for the most part using them with an arbitrary downloaded floppy image just entails dropping it on the USB thumb drive, selecting it with the buttons, and going.
 
Yes, that sort of what I was asking.

Let me elaborate, I own gotek drives but have only ever used them on my Amiga's, using them on a x86 system is something I've not yet done, so it's outside my wheel house of experience. I'm not clear on what I need to do to get a gotek working on a different system. What I know about the CP II is that it expects a 5.25" 360kb drive to be there as default. If I can somehow find someone to send me a setup disk, yes I could configure the computer to use a 1.44mb 3.5" floppy drive. But should the battery go flat, it will default back to the stock settings and I'll be taking it apart again and setting things back up. So really what I'm looking to find out, is if said Gotek is flashed with the appropriate software, can you hook one up and use it out the box without reconfiguring the computer? Will the CP II see the Gotek as a stock 360kb floppy drive? From what I've read on here, my understanding is, you don't need to adjust any pins, you simple pop a 360kb image on a usb pen and the gotek will imitate a 360kb drive.

What I had in mind was if possible, finding a slim half height 3D printed gotek facia for the CP II and swapping the drive out.
 
I think there are different jumper settings for a GoTek (with Flash-Floppy) for a PC vs. an Amiga, but I don't recall specifics, so you might have to look that up or maybe someone else on the forum can comment on the different drive signals that a PC expects compared with an Amiga.

If I understand correctly, because the Go-Tek does not have any hardware to constrain the disk geometry, and because the Flash-Floppy firmware is smart, it can basically emulate whatever disk drive type the BIOS is set too in the computer. For example, I have setup a Go-Tek in a PC with one USB stick with 720K Disk Images on it, and another USB stick with 1.44MB disk images in it, and when you change the drive type in the BIOS those different disk images work with no hardware changes. I know Gotek / flash floppy work as a 360K drive, I've done that before.

Hopefully you can modify (or design) a drive adapter for the Compaq Portable II. It's not a normal 1/2 height drive bay, it's 1/3 height or something non-standard.

Good luck with the Portable II!
 
 
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