Okay, time to test this thing and see what's up.
As mentioned earlier, this thing comes with a mini-CD--but don't expect much. You get English and Chinese versions of the somewhat cryptic manual and a couple of software programs in RAR archives.
No installation routines; you have to figure that out all by yourself. No wonder they don't sell many of these.
The format is fixed at 18 512-byte sectors per track on 80 tracks, with sectors numbered from 1 to 18. While a format operation is accepted, it's not possible to alter the sector length or ID. If a low-density (720K) format is attempted, it won't work--you get a "sector not found". Likewise, if you try to format FM sectors, it won't work.
The USB stick appears not to have any file system on it--it's just treated as 100 1.44M blocks of data. So you can get stuff onto the USB stick by copying to it by doing a disk-to-disk copy or copying an image to the physical USB drive using DD in Linux/Unix.
So, strictly speaking, you don't need the Windows programs supplied.
Time to dig a little deeper.
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Welcome back!
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The forums have been updated to the latest version of the software which means new features and some changes to old ones.
Please don't be alarmed. Change is good!
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Other suggestions
This forum is part of our mission to promote the preservation of vintage computers through education and outreach. (In real life we also run events and have a museum.) We encourage you to join us, participate, share your knowledge, and enjoy.
This forum has been around in this format for over 15 years. These rules and guidelines help us maintain a healthy and active community, and we moderate the forum to keep things on track. Please familiarize yourself with these rules and guidelines.
Remain civil and respectful
There are several hundred people who actively participate here. People come from all different backgrounds and will have different ways of seeing things. You will not agree with everything you read here. Back-and-forth discussions are fine but do not cross the line into rude or disrespectful behavior.
Conduct yourself as you would at any other place where people come together in person to discuss their hobby. If you wouldn't say something to somebody in person, then you probably should not be writing it here.
This should be obvious but, just in case: profanity, threats, slurs against any group (sexual, racial, gender, etc.) will not be tolerated.
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This forum has a private message feature that we want people to use for messages that are not of general interest to other members.
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Copyright and other legal issues
We are here to discuss vintage computing, so discussing software, books, and other intellectual property that is on-topic is fine. We don't want people using these forums to discuss or enable copyright violations or other things that are against the law; whether you agree with the law or not is irrelevant. Do not use our resources for something that is legally or morally questionable.
Our discussions here generally fall under "fair use." Telling people how to pirate a software title is an example of something that is not allowable here.
Reporting problematic posts
If you see spam, a wildly off-topic post, or something abusive or illegal please report the thread by clicking on the "Report Post" icon. (It looks like an exclamation point in a triangle and it is available under every post.) This send a notification to all of the moderators, so somebody will see it and deal with it.
If you are unsure you may consider sending a private message to a moderator instead.
New user moderation
New users are directly moderated so that we can weed spammers out early. This means that for your first 10 posts you will have some delay before they are seen. We understand this can be disruptive to the flow of conversation and we try to keep up with our new user moderation duties to avoid undue inconvenience. Please do not make duplicate posts, extra posts to bump your post count, or ask the moderators to expedite this process; 10 moderated posts will go by quickly.
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GoTek Floppy Emulator, Part II - Operation
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I strongly suspect that the major difference between any of these lies in the firmware.
That unpopulated block of 8 pads by the power connector is now making sense. The pair of pins labeled RST is just what it says--RESET when shorted. At the top end of the block, near the "J3" label we have a +3.3V supply and the BOOT0 pin from the MCU. Tying the 2 of these together causes the serial programmer to be activated after a RESET. The other pins are variously ground, and the USART1 Rx and Tx pins, as well as the SWCLK SWDIO pins for a JTAG debugger.
So,unless the manufacturer of this thing happened to blow the "protect" fuse, we can get the firmware out (and into) this thing.
Stay tuned...