Daisy changing a GOTEK to an SF314 as Drive 1

[sideburn]

Hey All,

 

I have a Gotek drive with a single cable that plugs into the ST and its working find but I also have an SF314 and if I chain the Gotek off it it will be Drive B and I think most game disk images want to be on drive 0 correct? and any disk images with an Auto folder won't boot on power up.

Is there a way to assign the SF314 as Drive 0 ? Or a way to make a connector so I can plug the SF314 into the Gotek instead?

[351cougar]

you didnt mention the type of ST this is? ie all machines with no internal drive were set to support 2 external daisy chain drives, while systems with an internal drive were jumpered for that drive to be A and external as B . The GOTEK manual should have something defining itself and passthru floppy id.  

[sideburn]

Ooops. Sorry. This is a 520 STm so no internal drive. The gotek is set to drive 0 and when I plug into the back of the ST it works as drive A and auto boots disk images with a org in the Auto directory. The problem is when I plug the SF314 in, it is now drive A and the Gotek plugged into the OUT jack of the SF314 makes it become drive B. 
 

I meant to ask if there’s a way to make the SF314 drive 1 (not 0) so it will become the B drive and the Gotek can be the A drive. 

Edited February 10 by sideburn

[TGB1718]

I think the only way would be to do some surgery in the SF314 to fit a switch to swap the D0/D1 select lines, I did

something like that bitd when I had an SF314 and a 5 1/4" external floppy on my 520STM.

 

I actually had 2 other third party 3 1/2" DS drives also fitted, but obviously could only use any 2 at the same time.

[TZJB]

13 hours ago, sideburn said:

Hey All,

 

I have a Gotek drive with a single cable that plugs into the ST and its working find but I also have an SF314 and if I chain the Gotek off it it will be Drive B and I think most game disk images want to be on drive 0 correct? and any disk images with an Auto folder won't boot on power up.

Is there a way to assign the SF314 as Drive 0 ? Or a way to make a connector so I can plug the SF314 into the Gotek instead?

 

There is no easy fix for this as Drive Select is a physical connection from the individual drive select pins of the unbuffered Atari ST Yamaha YM2149 sound chip pins 19 & 20.

 

They connect to the floppy drive DIN connector pins 5 & 6 so a changeover switch anywhere in those lines or in the disk drive itself would achieve your requirement as @TGB1718 suggested.

 

As you will see below, within the SF-314 DIN14 IN J5 pin 6 of the disk drive swaps to pin DIN14 OUT J6 pin 5 so a changeover switch there is probably the simplest.

 

As I don't think that I have an SF-314, I cannot advise on the best way to do that but you would probably need a miniature double pole changeover switch.

 

From their respective Service Manuals:-

 

[sideburn]

Ah, probly not worth mucking with the SF314. Do some ST games and software require booting from drive A? I suppose I will juts disconnect the SF314 when using the Gotek. Maybe it is polssible to make and in/out connector and plug the SF314 into the OUT din of that?

[TGB1718]

Maybe a solution would be to buy a second SF314 (maybe a faulty one so it's cheap) and mount the Gotek

in that case

 

I actually have a GOEX and that's mounted in my SF314 case.

 

Edited February 11 by TGB1718

[sideburn]

Eh. I already made a case 😝

[TZJB]

On 2/10/2024 at 10:09 PM, sideburn said:

Ah, probly not worth mucking with the SF314. Do some ST games and software require booting from drive A? I suppose I will juts disconnect the SF314 when using the Gotek. Maybe it is polssible to make and in/out connector and plug the SF314 into the OUT din of that?

 

The Atari ST will boot from Drive A by default unless a hard drive is detected. That is why a changeover switch, connected within the Atari ST, is so useful. I used a latching push button DPDT switch to achieve this and mounted it on the rear panel in a right hand position. The purpose of this at the time was to allow a 720KB 5.25" A drive which imitated a 720KB 3.5" drive but used cheaper floppy disks from the Atari 8 bit! The Atari ST is heavy enough to allow push button use without it moving!

For instance something like https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/382852458373 is similar to the switch I used to swap and restore the YM2149 pins 19 and 20, but any DPDT switch will work.

[sideburn]

Yeah I have an SF314 connected and I put A power switch on the back of the Gotek enclosure. But I can also push in the rotary controller to "eject" a disk image and boot from the HD. I mainly just wanted to be able to have the SF314 connected to the chain as drive B. Maybe I will find a broken SF314 for parts some day.

[MrMaddog]

You can also try DC BootIt which lets you boot from Drive B: from the GEM desktop.  I used it when I had a hard drive connect and wanted to boot into a game w/o restarting the compupter.

 

It's from this website on the Tools & Utilities disk.

 

[sideburn]

That sounds interesting, I’ll try it! I thought maybe I would just copy from Gotek on B to floppy on A but then discovered some game disk images are encrypted or something where they show zero contents but they boot from A and run.