Share your knowledge on these two classic MPCs
By ajarson Tue May 15, 2018 8:40 pm
I know that floppy emulators have been discussed in multiple topics, however I see a lot of conflicting information and I really am trying to understand what I'm doing wrong here. I have an MPC60 MKI with the Gotek USB drive. Everything seems to be working properly, the screen displays 000 and buttons respectively increase that number. However I cannot get it to display the "d0" or "d1" message and my MPC gives me an error saying "there is no disk in the drive". I was under the impression that the Gotek formats the USB in the unit itself, but I'm not sure how its done exactly, I have pressed both buttons and it seems to go through some formatting process, and counts up from "000" which I would assume means its creating the folders or "partitions".

The guy I got it from didn't have much to say about the Gotek other than "my recollection is that you have to pre-format the USB drive and partition the drive into 1.44mb sections (to mirror the DD flopies that the MPC used". So I am assuming its a formatting issue that I can't get past.

Can someone walk me through what the actual formatting process for the USB stick is?????? I'm dying to save on this, I'm starting to wish it had the original floppy drive in it because this is driving me crazy, any help would be appreciated.
User avatar
By nix Fri May 18, 2018 8:05 pm
Usb stick needs to be ms dos fat 32, with master boot record

Here is how to use this thing to save:

1. Set the number of the folder on Gotek, you don't need to manually create folders on the usb stick

2. Plug in the usb stick, it will just briefly display "d0" (this just check if there is a folder on the stick with the number you've entered, if there is it will load it)

3. Press left button, "d1" shows up

4. Go to Disk and save the stuff you want to save (seq, programs, etc), Gotek will store the files to it's internal memory (folder 000)

5. When saving is done, press left button, "d2" shows up and copying files from internal memory to usb stick starts

6. When copying is finished, display will show the folder number and all is done


Loading is done by setting the wanted folder on Gotek and sticking the usb in, that's it.
By ajarson Thu May 24, 2018 10:56 pm
Thanks a ton for your response. I know this is somethin that has been posted a lot.

So I formatted two USB sticks to FAT32 with Master Boot Record.

with first USB: powered up MPC60 mkI without USB in drive. Pressed right button on Gotek emulator to display 001. Put in USB stick (the stick itself immediately flashes red once) but d0 does not display at all even for a second! Left button just now moves the number displayed from 001 to 011. At any time in this process, going the the DISK screen and trying to save anything gives me an error message saying "There is no disk in the drive, please insert disk. Error Code ff80"

with the second USB: Powered up the MPC60 with the USB in drive and pressed and held both buttons upon power up. This looks to do a formatting procedure of some kind which I've heard the Goteks do. I can see that it looks like it takes about 10 min to count from 000 to 999 so I assume its making the 1000 "partitions" that the MPC sees as individual floppies. I've tried the same process above with this stick that has seemingly been formatted in the drive and its the same every time. Even after power cycling the MPC and everything, I simply cannot get it to read "d0" or "d1" I never get to that stage. DISK menu gives me the same error each time.

The guy I bought it from didn't have much to say about the Gotek but it did seem like he at least insinuated he had used it and it worked, but recommended SCSI. Believe me I will and I would just get a Zip drive and disks if the correct ones weren't upwards of $100-150 on eBay, right now all I want to do is to save!!!!! I'm seriously about to take the working floppy drive out of my S1000 and swap it with this lol.