Can anyone recommend a floppy emulator for the Akai S900

I'd prefer something I don't have to stress over, that I could just swap the drive and get to work immediately...

hxc has been the simplest / quickest for me

tapedeck wrote:hxc has been the simplest / quickest for me

Does it involve any formatting or any sort of back and forth between the floppy emulator and the Mac? 'm trying to avoid all of that. It never works out for me, so why even try? I rather pay extra to have it already done for me...

if you aren't worried about any old floppies, then no. you should be able to just format the sd card, create the blank images, and it will be fine.

does the s900 need an os disk? that is something you would need to figure out tho

What's your thoughts on this floppy emulator? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RY8J1SW/

I noticed in this video it's the same GoTek unit so all I have to do is find a link to the images and I should be good to go right?

I done a little extra research and found this thread which appears to be very helpful so I' going to risk it and try to do it myself. I'll report back if I was successful or not.. https://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1484

best of luck. it's an easy install.
i just put a gotek hxc floppy emulator in an ensoniq eps. took 20 minutes all up and worked perfectly from the first boot-up.

link for disk images:
https://hxc2001.com/download/floppy_dri ... Images.zip

downlaod the zip file. open. find the disk image for the s900. make 99 copies. drag and drop the 99 images onto an sd card. place sd card in drive. bingo!
the card will be formatted as fat32 when bought new. that will work fine.

if you don't have a card reader, you can use any usb device that uses SD cards. i used a tascam hand held digital recorder.

would be awesome to get that OS4 image on there

mr_debauch wrote:would be awesome to get that OS4 image on there

I'm doing that as well, I ordered both the 1.2.c EPROM and the S9V2 OS (aka Version 4)

OS4 image is in the link i just posted above.

The Gotek will function fine however if you want better options, You would need to get a Gotek which is flashed to the hXc or alternatively the FlashFloppy firmware.

There are also some cool mods for the Goteks such as a TFT screen which replaces that led display, so you can see a lot more info including full names of disk images. As well as a rotary encoder which will allow you to quickly cycle through all the disk images instead of having to keep a separate list with every numbered disk image.

didnt know about that mod... i hated the idea of having a damn paper copy table of contents for a usb stick.

richie wrote:The Gotek will function fine however if you want better options, You would need to get a Gotek which is flashed to the hXc or alternatively the FlashFloppy firmware.

There are also some cool mods for the Goteks such as a TFT screen which replaces that led display, so you can see a lot more info including full names of disk images. As well as a rotary encoder which will allow you to quickly cycle through all the disk images instead of having to keep a separate list with every numbered disk image.

Now I'm obsessed with modifying the GoTek before installing it in my S900. Do you have any video of this with your Akai sampler?

https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki/Hardware-Mods

Everything you folks want to know about mod wise is there. Scroll down for info on the screen replacement. You mad need some hot glue to hold it in to place as it is a little bit wider than the default numbered display.

The screen costs a few bucks on ebay, same with the rotary encoder. What I like about the encoder is that it has a 'built in' tact switch so after you are done cycling through the images you want, press in to the encoder and it will click. There is also a way to use a blackberry trackball which I find kind of amusing.

For those with hXc, I believe he has issued a newer firmware update that you can put on your usb drive and upgrade to in order to enable the use of the mods listed above.