ZX Spectrum +3 & Amstrad CPC6128 Internal Floppy Emulator Project |
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After getting annoyed at the failure rate of my old 3.5" floppy disks I started using a Gotek USB
Floppy emulator on my Amiga and Atari ST. Being impressed with how well that worked I
decided to give it a shot on my trusty ZX Spectrum +3 who's disks are as equally unreliable,
even harder to source and also very expensive.
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The Parts with links to eBay or Amazon (*other sellers are available) |
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USB Floppy Emulator Drive Model used SFRC922D |
PL2303HX USB TTL Adapter Wires added with female pin connectors |
I2C 0.91" 128x32 OLED Display Module Best getting one with pins already added |
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KY-040 Rotary Encoder with Knob Knob has 6mm D type socket |
Passive Piezoelectric Buzzer |
Floppy Molex Power Splitter |
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26way Ribbon Cable + IDC male Connector Easiest to source with connectors already on |
34way Female IDC Connector Shown already made up but need to source loose |
PCB Header Pin Strip Get 40pin strip as easiest to source |
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Jumper Wires Need 20cm long with F-F connectors |
You will also need the following tools |
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The build |
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Flash the Gotek drive with the latest FlashFloppy firmware. Best way is to follow the guide on the
FlashFloppy wiki.
Once done make sure you remove the system-bootloader jumper and pop it somewhere safe.
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Wire up the rotary encoder. These usually come with a PCB which is not needed and is too large. De-solder the encoder and wire it up as per the photos and the FlashFloppy wiki. Note the two ground pins are linked on the encoder with a wire with a second wire run out for connection. I recommend the green & black wires are ~15cm long and the blue & red ~10cm. |
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Solder two jumper wires to the 2 pin Piezoelectric buzzer so it can be connected straight to the GoTek board. |
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Wire up the OLED using the cables from the display that comes with the Gotek drive. You need to swap the cables around so instead of the two yellow wires on one side they are now top (pin1) and bottom (pin4) (see photos & FlashFloppy wiki). Your Gotek may have different coloured wires but basically just make sure the pins match up. |
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Take the Molex to floppy splitter and cut off one the floppy power connectors. Now solder a 4pin header to the bare wires (see photo). Note the twist in the wire due to the 3" drive having the +12V and +5V rails reversed. If you can source a 4pin male header then it would be better but I struggled to find these. Recommend this connector is ~6cm long |
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Make up the 26way to 34way floppy connector (as described on the CPC wiki). Take the 26way IDC male connector with ribbon cable and cut it about 5-6cm from the IDC. Then split the ribbon 6 wires from the red line and feed this into the 34way connector leaving a 2wire gap (see photo). Once you have this in position crimp the 34way shut (I use a vice) |
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Time to wire everything up as per the
FlashFloppy wiki.
At the back of the Gotek board: |
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In the middle of the Gotek board are 6 more pins: |
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The photo on the right (click for hi-res version) shows the fully wired up drive (minus the power & floppy ribbon cable). Adding the power (be careful with the +5V and +12V, see photo) and ribbon connector you can now test this in your Spectrum or Amstrad to make sure it powers up and you see the FlashFloppy firmware version notification on the OLED. |
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All that is missing now is a bracket to house the drive so it fits neatly into the Spectrum +3 or Amstrad CPC6128 (drives are the same size). You can find the bracket I've designed on Thingiverse. I designed it so that you can use the existing internal mounts and screws. You can see it mounted in an CPC6128 & Spectrum +3 in the photos (click for hires versions) |
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Now you are all set for loading up a USB stick with some .DSK files (get them on WoS or Google it)
and try them out. The USB stick needs to be
formatted FAT32 and you can use larger drives (16GB+) as long as they are formatted FAT32, however,
I recommend 2 or 4GB as this easily enough to fit every Spectrum and Amstrad disk on.
I also highly recommend you create sub-folders on the USB stick
(0-9, A...Z) to put the .DSK files in, to make it much easier to navigate.
Long filenames are supported which also helps with navigation and the display scrolls if they are longer
than it can show in one go.
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