I recently bought a Gotek device for my Amiga 500, flashed with HxC firmware (Firmware 3.0.5.1a, ver 1.14a), and it runs pretty fine, apart from one problem...
I can't seem to write/save anything! Stuff like creating save disks (hangs up, not even the disk LED on the Gotek/Amiga blinks...) or simply saving the game (while it does say stuff like 'Saving.. done', and there's some kind of activity going on, looking at the Floppy LED, it doesn't really save anything, upon loading it restores the previous save (or informs that there's no saved game), as if the saving procedure never happened - I checked the ADFs under WinUAE, and they saved and restored just fine).
I tried both ADFs and HFEs, but same thing happens. Should I upgrade/revert the firmware, or change the jumper settings?
Cheers,
Kurasiu.
HxC on Gotek save/write issues
Re: HxC on Gotek save/write issues
Here some points about the write support :
- You can't write non DOS/ custom tracks on an ADF file. This is the case with many games. Some also write a AmigaDOS track at the track 80,81,82... This can't work too. This is also the case with WinUAE, that's why it create an Extended ADF file when a software try to do this kind of things. Anyway there is no choice, you must use the HFE file format in these cases.
- The Gotek have very little memory (64KB!), so the firmware must flush the whole track to the USB Stick once the track datas are captured. This may take more or less time depending of the USB Stick write Speed. With a true floppy disk there is no delay at this point. If the Amiga software do a verify and have a long enough timeout, this will work. If the timeout is too short, this will fail (the gotek is still writing to the usb stick...).
If the Amiga software doesn't do a verify and write multiple tracks at once, this will probably fail (no time to flush the track datas to the usb stick...)
So in these case i recommend to test another USB Stick, with a better write speed.
Be aware that the latest big & expensive USB3 stick may be slower than some old stick. All the write bench are done with huge among of data (>>1MB). Here we are writing some little KB once but the flash devices are not designed to have a good performance with small write. Quite often bigger is the Flash device, longer is the write latency...
Anyway, to check that there is no hardware problem, try to write a little file or rename something on the Workbench, this should work without any problem.
FYI i am preparing another hardware solving all these issues.
The above points happen when you trying to make something "low cost" at any price and miss some important designs problems...
- You can't write non DOS/ custom tracks on an ADF file. This is the case with many games. Some also write a AmigaDOS track at the track 80,81,82... This can't work too. This is also the case with WinUAE, that's why it create an Extended ADF file when a software try to do this kind of things. Anyway there is no choice, you must use the HFE file format in these cases.
- The Gotek have very little memory (64KB!), so the firmware must flush the whole track to the USB Stick once the track datas are captured. This may take more or less time depending of the USB Stick write Speed. With a true floppy disk there is no delay at this point. If the Amiga software do a verify and have a long enough timeout, this will work. If the timeout is too short, this will fail (the gotek is still writing to the usb stick...).
If the Amiga software doesn't do a verify and write multiple tracks at once, this will probably fail (no time to flush the track datas to the usb stick...)
So in these case i recommend to test another USB Stick, with a better write speed.
Be aware that the latest big & expensive USB3 stick may be slower than some old stick. All the write bench are done with huge among of data (>>1MB). Here we are writing some little KB once but the flash devices are not designed to have a good performance with small write. Quite often bigger is the Flash device, longer is the write latency...
Anyway, to check that there is no hardware problem, try to write a little file or rename something on the Workbench, this should work without any problem.
FYI i am preparing another hardware solving all these issues.
The above points happen when you trying to make something "low cost" at any price and miss some important designs problems...
Re: HxC on Gotek save/write issues
Thanks for the reply, Jeff!
I see! Well, I tried doing something as simple as saving my Workbench settings (mouse cursor and background colour) - apparently the Gotek saved it, however now upon every boot I'm greeted with "bad sectors" message, however the Workbench works just fine.
Oh well, at least the games that don't require any saving/writing, are totally blazing on your firmware. All of the tested multidisk ones (save for one, which most likely is a bad rip) are working fine!
I see! Well, I tried doing something as simple as saving my Workbench settings (mouse cursor and background colour) - apparently the Gotek saved it, however now upon every boot I'm greeted with "bad sectors" message, however the Workbench works just fine.
Oh well, at least the games that don't require any saving/writing, are totally blazing on your firmware.
All of the tested multidisk ones (save for one, which most likely is a bad rip) are working fine!Re: HxC on Gotek save/write issues
Anyway you shouldn't get the bad sector message, so there is something else.
Can you share the corrupted HFE ?
Can you share the corrupted HFE ?