This is a fusion of a "Gotek" and a "Bluepill" that can provide both FlashFloppy and FF_OSD on a single board. Thank you to Keir Fraser for his firmware https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy, and to the chinese people for the original device.
Thanks to the OSD and Amiga keyboard support, LCD/OLED display or buttons are no longer necessary and the device can be almost completely hidden inside Amiga computers, without damaging their case. It is still possible to install a display and buttons, though.
This board also has something special : when connected to an "Amiga dual floppy selector" board, it can daisy-chain between the original floppy drive and the motherboard. In this configuration, the OSD let you choose dynamically which drive is DF0 and DF1. Thanks to this you can enjoy both your original games on floppies and disk images on USB or SDcard !
This is a hobbyist project, it comes with no warranty and no support. Also remember that the Amiga machines are about 30 years old and may fail because of such hardware expansions.
This version is not endorsed by the author of FlashFloppy, please don't bother him with issues you might have because of it.
I publish my work under the CC-BY-NC-SA license. The content of this repository is the result of weeks of work, requiring investment in tools, parts, prototypes, and risky tests on his own equipment. For this reason the author does not want third parties to sell products and keep all the profit, usually without even offering support to their customers. If you see people selling this without the consent of the author, don't buy from them.
My modifications to the FF_OSD source are under "the unlicense", like the original code.
If you find it useful and want to reward me : I am always looking for Amiga/Amstrad CPC hardware to repair and hack, please contact me.
- 1x STM32F105RBT6
- 1x STM32F103C8T6
- 1x 74LS07D
- 1x 3.3v LDO, either SPX3819M5-L-3-3 or XC6206P332MR or equivalent
- 2x 8MHz HC-49 crystals
- 3x 10uF 0805 capacitors
- 9x 100nF 0805 capacitors
- 4x 22pf 0805 capacitors
- 2x 1k 4x0603 resistor arrays
- 3x 4k7 0805 resistors
- 1x 270 ohm 0805 resistor
- 2x 22 ohm 0805 resistors
- optional for activity LED : 1x 0805 resistor and LED
- 1x 2x17 pins, socket or header, see below. Remove pin 3 which is a key.
- optional for drive daisy-chain : 1x 2x17 pins header or socket. You might choose 90° angled type. Remove pin 3 which is a key.
- 1x USB A Female Socket, type G54
- 1x vertical floppy power connector or 1x4 pin header
- jumpers or wire for DS0/DS1 selection
- pin headers or wires for keyboard, video, drive selection, piezo transducer, SD-card, buttons, rotary encoder, display
Other boards you may use with this "Floppy emulator with OSD":
- Amiga-dual-floppy-selector to keep your mechanical drive
- A600-1200KeyboardSocket to pick the keyboard signals on an A600 or A1200
- USB_A or microSD breakout to make the flash memory accessible from outside the system
Components are SMD, and have quite thin pin pitch. You need to know what you are doing.
You may choose to install the USB and/or SD connector on a remote board, to make them accessible through trapdoors or openings in the case. You may solder buttons, rotary encoder, LED, display and piezo transducer.
Check for shorts at least between 5V, 12V and GND traces before applying power !
The programming port do not need to be soldered since it needs to be programmed just once : you can just hold it in place during the few seconds required for programming.
If you plan to use the "Amiga dual floppy selector":
- on the hardware side, install female pin socket inside P1 and J11 on the bottom of the PCB. This way they will plug on the pin headers of the selector. Otherwise if you plan to use only ribbon cables, then populate them with pin headers on the top.
- on the software side, you need to compile FF_OSD from source, with the small modifications proposed in this repository. Use
patch -ru -d FF_OSD-master < patchto apply them. FlashFloppy does not require any modification.
To program the F103 uC then the F105 uC, I personally use a STLINK clone dongle with the stlink tool : https://github.com/stlink-org/stlink. Each uC has its own SWDIO/SWDCLK pins.
To connect the wires to components on the A500 motherboard without soldering on it, here is a tip :
- Take a metal pin from the female 2.54mm pin socket, which is shaped as a lyre. The one you removed from pin 3 for example.
- Solder the wire on the pin, where you normally solder it.
- Place the pin inside heat-shrink tube, with only 1mm of metal uncovered from the tips of the lyre.
- Snap the tip on the lyre on the component where you want to connect.
- Connect the device either on top of an "Amiga dual floppy selector", or to the floppy ribbon cable and power plug
- When using the "Amiga dual floppy selector", if you plan to use a second drive, then connect its ribbon cable to the daisy chain connector of the Floppy emulator. Connect the drive power cable on the selector.
- Connect CSYNC, KB_CLOCK and KB_DATA to the motherboard as explained in FF_OSD wiki.
- Connect VIDEO to the motherboard. The 270 ohm resistor is now embedded on the latest revision of the board.
- Insert the USB thumb drive or SD-card
- Turn on the Amiga, enjoy.
To change the drives configuration using the "Amiga dual floppy selector" :
- First you should eject all floppies to prevent confusion of the OS.
- Go to the FF_OSD config menu, change the Drive config setting accordingly. Then Use or Save the new settings.
- If you changed from one to two or two to one drive, then you need to reboot for the second drive to be identified or ignored correctly.