Now that I've installed my Gotek SFRM72-FU-DL emulator in my W30, I'm becoming more and more aware of its shortcomings, viz.:
Not much faster than loading from floppies (although this is mainly down to the W30 architecture rather than the emulator's fault. Having said that, a USB stick is much more reliable than magnetic DD floppies).
Only 100 disk images accessible from one USB stick (b00-b99), so having a large capacity stick is pointless.
The need to constantly plug/unplug the stick to choose a new file to load.That last one can be slightly improved with a simple mod of installing an SPDT toggle switch (less than $1/EUR 1) on the front panel. Only 4 solders required (plus cutting a trace on the Gotek's PCB). Details at:
http://llamamusic.com/s50s550/USB_Floppy_Emulator_Toggle_v2.pdf(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fedLRCFZycY&lc=z22rh3cirkmstfengacdp434ktfpaujuk2qrlzzl3xhw03c010c.1558068922145414)
However, it has come to my attention that it is possible to mod the Gotek in an even better way, namely to add a 0.91-inch OLED alphanumeric screen (about 2 or 3 $/EUR, usually used for Arduino projects) together with a rotary encoder (also a few dollars/Euros).
The latter is a knob that you turn clockwise/anticlockwise to increase/decrease the image number to quickly access the specific disk image you require. It also has a push button function to do the same as the aforementioned SPDT toggle switch. But the drawback is you have to flash the firmware of the Gotek with "FlashFloppy" for either the screen/encoder to work. For this you either need a USB-TTL adapter or USB A-to-A cable. The flashing process is irreversible. The wiki (
https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki) says on its Host Platforms page that Roland keyboards "typically work out of the box with no special configuration required".
Anyone out there have the skills, knowledge, time and money (me, none of those unfortunately) to try out this procedure and report back to us?
