Ben: Perhaps the Amiga uses line frequency as a timing reference for the drive and 50Hz vs 60Hz is the problem? Bruce From: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vcfed.org> On Behalf Of Benjamin Krein via vcf-midatlantic Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2025 8:33 AM To: Jeff S <jsalzman@gmail.com> Cc: Benjamin Krein <superbenk@gmail.com>; vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Can't get Gotek to work with Amiga 500+ It works fine on the BBC Micro. Benjamin Krein Sent from my iPhone On Sep 21, 2025, at 8:29 AM, Jeff S <jsalzman@gmail.com<mailto:jsalzman@gmail.com>> wrote:  Looks like you covered most every troubleshooting option. I'm guessing the next step is verifying the Gotek itself. Are you able to make it work on a PC compatible? On Sun, Sep 21, 2025, 7:28 AM Benjamin Krein via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org<mailto:vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org>> wrote: This should be the easiest thing in the world & yet I'm completely stuck. After 40+ years I've FINALLY got an Amiga 500+. I've been wanting an Amiga nearly all my life but never had one until now. Anyhow, I don't have any physical media but I do have a Gotek (Artery AT32F415CBT7 Microcontroller). I've been trying for the past 2 days to just get Workbench to boot on this thing & I'm not getting anywhere. The computer is an Amiga 500+ I brought home from the UK (I'm in the USA). Before leaving I was able to see it boot up into a game from the physical floppy drive without any issues whatsoever. It works. When I power things on I get to the insert-disk animation but that's as far as I get. Here's what I've done: 1. Upgraded FlashFloppy on the Gotek to the latest 3.44 2. Factory reset the internal flash on the Gotek 3. Copied *JUST* Workbench 2.04 ADF to the USB stick 4. Tried adding a FF.CFG with "interface = amiga" & nothing else 5. Tried multiple USB thumb drives 6. Formatted USB sticks with both the official SD Formatter Utility as well as Disk-Utility 7. Confirmed jumper on the Gotek is on S0 8. Tried different 34-pin cable 9. Powered on with both mouse buttons pressed & picked DF0 (only one available) from the boot selector None of the above works. The activity light on the Gotek comes on briefly when it's being accessed but the track indicator on the OLED never shows any activity. I've bought Amiga Forever Plus so I'm using their official ADF files. I'm fresh out of ideas at this point. The Gotek works perfectly fine on other computers (BBC Micro B) so I'm pretty sure I don't have a hardware issue. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Happy to provide any other info that might help too. PS - Does anyone have a diskette copy of Workbench 2.04 they'd be willing to sell/send me? I'd love to just see this Amiga work even if just booting into Workbench (I'm near Philadelphia, PA). -- - Benjamin Krein

I broke down & pulled the Gotek out of my Osborne (it's an AT32F435, for what it's worth) & tried it. It works PERFECTLY in the Amiga! I'm guessing I burned something up on the other Gotek somehow. I did order another AT32F435 today so I'm excited to know it will work. I have a working Amiga now! Thanks everyone! - Ben On Mon, Sep 22, 2025 at 5:28 PM Jeff S <jsalzman@gmail.com> wrote:

Floppy timings on an Amiga 500 are not affected by the video hardware 50Hz/60Hz refresh rates.

On Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 11:19 AM Bruce Muschlitz <bmuschlitz@hotmail.com> wrote:

...

Ben:

Perhaps the Amiga uses line frequency as a timing reference for the drive and 50Hz vs 60Hz is the problem?

Bruce

-- - Benjamin Krein

You can get the Clonto Amiga Forever to get the Amiga Kickstart ROMs and Workbench’s. It has them as adf (Gotek will read these).

I did buy the Amiga Forever Plus edition so I do have these images. Unfortunately no way to transfer them to physical floppies though, thus me trying to get the Gotek to work.

Does the drive lightup at all when trying to boot? You should see some of the LEDs come on at least a little saying hey I am trying to do something.

Yes it does. Activity light comes on when the 500 powers on & blinks a couple of times before going off. No activity light when inserting/changing to a new image on the Gotek though. No other activity after the initial activity when the machine is powered on.

As a side note I hope you have removed the Varta battery from your A500+ and if not please do so as it is the killer of Amiga’s for sure!

I did indeed! There was very slight signs of corrosion starting but I don't think anything was actually damaged yet. I probed the traces that looked affected & they all are fine. I think I was able to catch the battery early enough & I don't think anything is broken. As per Jeff's suggestion I pulled out a Pentium 1 PC I have & hooked the Gotek up to that with the proper jumper settings & FF.CFG. Now I'm getting a drive error during POST for the Gotek drive so I'm starting to wonder if I fried it somehow. Maybe there's nothing wrong with the Amiga at all & my Gotek is just dead now. I do have another one but it's installed into an Osborne that I'll have to tear apart to get to it so I'll have to do that later. Seems like a new Gotek (or 2) is in my future though. By the way, Ryan, I think it was you that I bought a 1084D monitor off of at VCF East a couple years ago. You offered me the Amiga RGB cable to go with it that I almost turned down. I'm so glad I didn't because it's come in extremely handy now! Thank you if you're the Ryan I'm thinking of! :) (Monitor has been fantastic too!) On Sun, Sep 21, 2025 at 2:00 PM Ryan Stapleton <ryan@bluewizard.net> wrote:

Hello Benjamin,

Congratulations on your Amiga 500+.

You can get the Clonto Amiga Forever to get the Amiga Kickstart ROMs and Workbench’s. It has them as adf (Gotek will read these).

https://www.amigaforever.com/plus/

The USB stick for the Gotek only needs formatted as a FAT32 and you can then copy the items to it.

I found this guild that looks decent. https://www.gotek-retro.eu/flashfloppy-install-games-amiga/

Note if you have the Gotek that has the OLED and turn knob I don’t believe you need the .CFG Since you have the latest Flashfloppy I think you can just copy the ADFs you want to boot to the USB Stick. If yours is one without the OLED screen you may need to follow the guide I linked above more. Once you get some more life we might be able to dig into that a little more.

For reference I have this one: https://www.retrobuddys.com/en/shop/amiga-hw-mods/gotek-drive-with-0-96-disp... I didn’t buy it from there and just leaving this to show what ones I use.

I assume you have Kickstart 2.04 based on this email?

I see that it shows up as DF0 when clicking both mouse buttons which is good.

Does the drive lightup at all when trying to boot? You should see some of the LEDs come on at least a little saying hey I am trying to do something.

Here is a link to a demo adf disk that you should be able to try and boot. It says it only needs OCS chipset.

https://files.scene.org/get/parties/2021/revision21/amiga-intro/pjz-planetdi... https://ada.untergrund.net/?p=demo&i=943

It contains an ADF and with some luck of copying that to the USB Stick it will boot for ya (assuming its selected in the Gotek).

If you have to program the Gotek you will need to Autoboot to work per the guide linked above.

As a side note I hope you have removed the Varta battery from your A500+ and if not please do so as it is the killer of Amiga’s for sure!

Thank you -Ryan

...

On Sep 21, 2025, at 7:27 AM, Benjamin Krein via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

This should be the easiest thing in the world & yet I'm completely stuck. After 40+ years I've FINALLY got an Amiga 500+. I've been wanting an Amiga nearly all my life but never had one until now. Anyhow, I don't have any physical media but I do have a Gotek (Artery AT32F415CBT7 Microcontroller). I've been trying for the past 2 days to just get Workbench to boot on this thing & I'm not getting anywhere.

The computer is an Amiga 500+ I brought home from the UK (I'm in the USA). Before leaving I was able to see it boot up into a game from the physical floppy drive without any issues whatsoever. It works.

When I power things on I get to the insert-disk animation but that's as far as I get. Here's what I've done:

1. Upgraded FlashFloppy on the Gotek to the latest 3.44 2. Factory reset the internal flash on the Gotek 3. Copied *JUST* Workbench 2.04 ADF to the USB stick 4. Tried adding a FF.CFG with "interface = amiga" & nothing else 5. Tried multiple USB thumb drives 6. Formatted USB sticks with both the official SD Formatter Utility as well as Disk-Utility 7. Confirmed jumper on the Gotek is on S0 8. Tried different 34-pin cable 9. Powered on with both mouse buttons pressed & picked DF0 (only one available) from the boot selector

None of the above works. The activity light on the Gotek comes on briefly when it's being accessed but the track indicator on the OLED never shows any activity.

I've bought Amiga Forever Plus so I'm using their official ADF files.

I'm fresh out of ideas at this point. The Gotek works perfectly fine on other computers (BBC Micro B) so I'm pretty sure I don't have a hardware issue. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Happy to provide any other info that might help too.

PS - Does anyone have a diskette copy of Workbench 2.04 they'd be willing to sell/send me? I'd love to just see this Amiga work even if just booting into Workbench (I'm near Philadelphia, PA).

-- - Benjamin Krein

-- - Benjamin Krein