Gotek with HxC - Cannot get any images to work properly.

HxC Floppy Emulator on Atari ST support
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chargingcharlie7457
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2022 1:41 am

Gotek with HxC - Cannot get any images to work properly.

Post by chargingcharlie7457 »

Greetings All, I have been banging my head hoping to find a simple solution , or even a complicated one but nothing I have tried so far is working and so I hope someone with much more experience can point me in the right direction.

I have an Atari 520ST, It is one of the first models I believe, without an internal floppy drive.

I recently bought a Gotek drive emulator, and I flashed HxC onto it, and set up my USB drive for Autoboot mode:
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Also this is the artery gotek with the teeny tiny chip the model is SFRKC30.AT2, I heard these models have less memory or something? maybe something to consider for the problems I'm having?

The flash and install to my ST all went smooth and I am able to access the file selector and set the slots, etc.
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Now no matter the format, no matter the image, I get some sort of error, and they are different errors for different files.

For example when I boot the paperboy image I get a black screen with BDOS error, the little bit I read online leads me to think this is an address error or its looking for an image on the wrong side of a disk? Forgive my ignorance I'm still learning lol.

Another example is on the Rampage image I get a weird "kein Virus in bootsektor" error.

In both the above cases, once this error pops up the LCD on the Gotek shows three lines on the top and three on the bottom and will not do anything until I reboot.

Yet another example is the one that got my hopes very high is the "darkside of the spoon" image as when I booted it the sweet clear sound of theme music started to play, I waited in anticipation only to not get a picture, just lines of static as the awesome music blares on:
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In this case, the LCD on the gotek stays lit at the 001 position, as I assume it should. I can even progress through screens of the game by pressing keys and the sounds lead me to believe that its actually responding to the presses, just no picture at all.

I am using the SM124 monochrome monitor, not sure if that has anything to do with why a picture wont show.

So there you have it, my dilemma so far. If anyone has questions for diagnosing this problem please feel free to ask me. I have tried about every format and every combination of jumpers and what not that I've read about and have not been able to successfully boot a single image.

I have tried placing the jumper on just S1, just S0, S1+S0, M0+S0, and M0+S1 and nothing seemed to make a difference, except for when there was a jumper in the M0 spot, the system wouldn't even boot to the desktop.

Also I am not using an existing floppy drives board to power and hook up to the ST, I got this interface that provides power to the gotek and connectivity to the ST, I bought it on a website https://5vsupply.com/ I believe I have everything on that correctly hooked up because I am actually accessing the gotek and my ST recognizes it. The only way I can see this causing any issues is that since its powered separately when I'm in autoboot mode and hit F7 to save the slot 1 and reboot, the gotek actually doesn't reboot with the system so I have to time it and manually turn on the gotek and immediately turn on the ST and then it autoboots to whatever I assigned to slot 1.

Maybe trying a different usage mode might fix these issues? I haven't tried any other mode , autoboot seemed intimidating enough for a newbie like me, lol.

I know this was long and probably boring, I just wanted to give as much info as I can think of to hopefully get some help. Please if you need pictures or anything to see what I have going on just ask.

I appreciate any advice or troubleshooting you can send my way and look forward to being a part of the community.

Jeff
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Re: Gotek with HxC - Cannot get any images to work properly.

Post by Jeff »

I think that the issue is simple : most of these games are not compatible with high resolution monitors (640x400).
You need to use a TV or a "low/medium" resolution compatible monitors (SC1435,...)

chargingcharlie7457
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2022 1:41 am

Re: Gotek with HxC - Cannot get any images to work properly.

Post by chargingcharlie7457 »

Jeff wrote:
Sat Apr 30, 2022 10:24 pm
I think that the issue is simple : most of these games are not compatible with high resolution monitors (640x400).
You need to use a TV or a "low/medium" resolution compatible monitors (SC1435,...)
Thanks Jeff,

I tried monochrome images and those don't work either, For example, I tried a simple word processing image, when loaded from the autoboot file selector, it takes me to the desktop where i can click to access floppy drive A and B, I click on it and the files are there, but I get the "Drive A not responding" error and the Gotek goes to the 6 dashes on the lcd screen
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I'm wondering if I need to put pull up resistors on the floppy controller like I saw somewhere early on when trying to diagnose this.

chargingcharlie7457
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2022 1:41 am

Re: Gotek with HxC - Cannot get any images to work properly.

Post by chargingcharlie7457 »

**update**

Just to see if I get different results I ran HxC in indexed mode and when I get the drive not responding error, I power off the gotek, turn it on again then hit retry, it will execute the command that it previously errored out on. I was able to get all the way to an install screen before the bombs came and froze up the system, Maniac mansion also seemed like it was going to boot up when I couldn't get past the drive not responding screen with this trick. And the most simplistic of images, a calculator, actually worked!! its not much but its progress. Does what I describe point to a problem with a certain component that you can think of?

YAY !!
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