Jul 17, 2012 - 14 July 2013: HxCFloppyEmulator 2.0.15.0. 
New Loader: SpeccyDos *.SDD support added. New Loader: Apple 2 DOS 3.3 (*.DO) & ProDOS.
Following on my previous and, I realized that the eBay market saw the introduction of another floppy emulator. This one is the GoTek System SFR1M44-U100K 1000-bank USB floppy emulator, also attractively priced around US$20. The Unit and Inclusions The device itself has the letters GOTEK in the moulding, and features a three-digit seven-segment LED display (still covered with plastic tape), a USB port, two push buttons and an access LED. The green LED lights up whenever the drive is active. The right button is used to increment the “ones” position, the left button increments the “tens” position, and pressing both buttons momentarily increments the “hundreds” position.
Holding them both may engage the auto-format function which will erase all content. In use, this drive allows you to increment the bank during accesses but this may lead to data loss. The increment function appears to cause the change line to be toggled to signal to the controller a disk removal. The other emulator locks-out the increment/decrement during accesses. The casing itself differs from the other emulator, with a distinctive “step” shape, and the use of only three screws to secure the unit together.
There was also the provision for branding and other button labels which are not provided. The step shape is clearly visible here – and may be an advantage when trying to shoehorn the device into non-standard floppy drive enclosures, although those often have non-standard interfaces as well. Exposed at the rear are jumpers – some are labelled for drive select, and others are undocumented. There are also through holes unpopulated which are also for configuration by jumper. The 34 pin interface has the keying pin (pin 3) still in place (just like the other emulator I had), there’s no harm clipping this off for cables with the hole blocked. It’s probably a good time to note that this emulator does come with an 8cm CD (groan!) however, the tools provided are arranged arbitrarily, are poor and (some) improperly licensed.
I’ll show you some of it later on. It also comes with manuals, although for a variety of versions of products which are not related whatsoever. It appears there are separate versions for 720kB, 1.2Mb and 1.44Mb format, and there is a format which images the disk, and another which interprets folders as a disk – and customized versions for sewing machines and networked applications.
There are some documentation which refers to a 100-bank model, and others to a 1000-bank model and indeed the tools seem deficient in the least. Most of this is there to confuse you, so I’d suggest avoiding the CD if you can. The is provided though with some jumper explanation. The internals consist of a green PCB populated with an ARM Cortex-M3 CPU from STMicroelectronics, a Hex Inverter Buffer, a 3.3v regulator, and a few supporting resistors, capacitors and a crystal. It’s a little simpler looking compared to the other emulator – having no external SRAM or multiple ICs – the magic will obviously be in the programming of the ARM CPU.
The rear side of the PCB is relatively bare – picture is for proof: The Unit In Use I plugged it into the same old Windows 95 box that I have running (since it’s capable of non-standard formats) just to give it a go. The unit would display 000 without a USB stick connected, and would display the same once a stick is connected. Formatting the disks (with verification) with WinImage was not a problem at 1.44Mb. Surprisingly, a format at 1.2Mb also succeeded.