:) WK-1800 and GOTEK

[HELVETIA]

HI all   I am new in this forum however using casio keyboards for along time .

 

About 2 years ago I bought a "GOTEK"   floppy drive emulator  for my WK1800 and still runs !

If you a little bit techie   you can replace the old floppy drive with it  and save/load  your files digitally on USB stick .

However  mine came not with any schematics and had to fiddle a lots to get it working .

The new drive have some problems as it's maybe normal  .

1 if you load or save  some thing you cannot switch to another directory  ,,only solution is to switch keyboard of and on  ,

All works but a little sloppy  in my opinion .

If there is any one interested  for this I will post more 

Alessandro .

 

[Jokeyman123]

I also understand -I've studied these drives for quite awhile and opted out for the following reason-the data transfer rate for these is supposedly as slow as a floppy disk. Has this been your experience? And one has to be careful to get the exact right model compatible with a specific keyboard as some of these no matter how you mod them, will not work at all. I've kept my 1) RM1X 2) SY77 and 3 Ensoniq TS12 on floppies for this reason. Especially for sample transfers (TS12 can do that) I can imagine this wouldn't help much.

[HELVETIA]

I bought the Gotek while my floppy drive started to fail ..but was a complete gamble however it was cheap the Gotek .

Think the speed is almost same as the floppy drive but much safer as the usb drive not fails quick .

 Gotek said it can replace many Keyboards floppy drives and they gave not  really any  specific  brand but rather random .

As I wrote before not any schematics where given .

first try out after fitting it in the wk1800 what is really easy  ..floppy  indicator light not turned of ...i know that must be the cable...and yes turned the floppy connector and  the light was off

but not wanted to load or save data .

Next step jumpers and no schematics  ! however there where not to many jumpers and with located them to other positions I found the right jumper settings  and voila it was working and still works !

I did not lost any data in the time I used it   but got some flaws as I wrote earlier  and keep an great old keyboard alive

.

 

[Chas]

I will want to go down a similar road at some point in the future with my vintage Casio FZ-20M sampler. They're notorious for failing disk drives, made worse by the fact that Casio chose to use the Shugart buss type drives, rather than the far, far more common and easier to find PC style 3.5" drives. This means that finding a replacement drive for my FZ is nigh on impossible 30 years later, and the very few Shugart drives that do turn up once in a blue moon are exhorbitantly priced.

 

As Brad mentioned, everything I've heard about these USB style floppy drive replacements indicate that loading and saving are no quicker than a standard floppy. This is due to the interface buss used in the original device acting as a bottleneck. The USB drives are capable of much higher transfer speeds, but the interface only works at one speed.

 

With regards to my FZ, I am lucky with it being the last of the line 20M model, as this is the only FZ to be fitted with a SCSI connector and with the ability to connect to a HDD. Better still, despite HDD's being considerably slower in the latter 80's, the SCSI interface is capable of much higher transfer speeds. There is a device available called SCSI2SD, which connects to the SCSI interface and allows the use of standard SD cards. Data/ files can be stored/ transferred from any computer to the SD card, then the SD card can be inserted into the SCSI2SD device and the FZ will treat it as an HDD. With lighting fast access and transfer speeds thanks to the SCSI capability.  Another project for me to add to my ever growing list!

[HELVETIA]

Nice....  yes I know scsi is a problem  nowadays   ...good luck with you'r project !

 

[HELVETIA]

On 11/2/2019 at 6:41 AM, Chas said:

I will want to go down a similar road at some point in the future with my vintage Casio FZ-20M sampler. They're notorious for failing disk drives, made worse by the fact that Casio chose to use the Shugart buss type drives, rather than the far, far more common and easier to find PC style 3.5" drives. This means that finding a replacement drive for my FZ is nigh on impossible 30 years later, and the very few Shugart drives that do turn up once in a blue moon are exhorbitantly priced.

 

As Brad mentioned, everything I've heard about these USB style floppy drive replacements indicate that loading and saving are no quicker than a standard floppy. This is due to the interface buss used in the original device acting as a bottleneck. The USB drives are capable of much higher transfer speeds, but the interface only works at one speed.

 

With regards to my FZ, I am lucky with it being the last of the line 20M model, as this is the only FZ to be fitted with a SCSI connector and with the ability to connect to a HDD. Better still, despite HDD's being considerably slower in the latter 80's, the SCSI interface is capable of much higher transfer speeds. There is a device available called SCSI2SD, which connects to the SCSI interface and allows the use of standard SD cards. Data/ files can be stored/ transferred from any computer to the SD card, then the SD card can be inserted into the SCSI2SD device and the FZ will treat it as an HDD. With lighting fast access and transfer speeds thanks to the SCSI capability.  Another project for me to add to my ever growing list!

Hi surprise surprise I have found a GOTEK  setup doc  .....

take a look at it ! 

Alessandro   .

 

usb-floppy-emulation-manual.pdf