Gotek/HxC Dual drive

Post Reply
namachari
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2016 11:33 am

Gotek/HxC Dual drive

Post by namachari »

As far as I can tell this has not yet been confirmed.
Obviously the Gotek can't do 2 drive emulation within one unit, however I've just hooked up two Gotek units. One set as S0 (drive A) the other as S1 (Drive B), both units share the same straight (no twist) floppy cable.

Works.

Phil

teevee
Posts: 137
Joined: Sun Nov 03, 2013 7:21 pm

Re: Gotek/HxC Dual drive

Post by teevee »

namachari wrote:As far as I can tell this has not yet been confirmed.
Obviously the Gotek can't do 2 drive emulation within one unit, however I've just hooked up two Gotek units. One set as S0 (drive A) the other as S1 (Drive B), both units share the same straight (no twist) floppy cable.

Works.

Phil
Hi Phil,

what device are you testing this experiment with and why do you need dual drive? :)

mondo1976
Posts: 156
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 3:54 pm

Re: Gotek/HxC Dual drive

Post by mondo1976 »

Although I can't think of any solid reason to expect that this wouldn't have worked, it's good to get confirmation that it does.

I can't speak to the OP's particular need to do this, but there were definitely some old PC games that required dual disk drives to work. They required two drives because otherwise the need to keep swapping disks in and out of a single drive would have been prohibitive. Lightspeed by Microprose was one of the titles, if I'm not mistaken. Unless you had a dual drive setup then you were basically stuck in an infinite loop of "Insert Disk 1, Insert Disk 2".

It also came in handy during some of the Sierra adventure games, I think. You could have a couple of the disks in and then when you'd explore different sections of the map it would try to auto-load from the alternate drive.

So there are definitely applications and advantages to doing such a thing.

namachari
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Aug 23, 2016 11:33 am

Re: Gotek/HxC Dual drive

Post by namachari »

Hi,
I'm using this on various S-100 systems (IMSAI 8080, SOL-20 etc) to emulate dual 8" drives.

Phil

Post Reply