Tatung Computer Forum

Hello everyone!

So happy to finally get my hands on an Einstein here in the US. When I lived in the UK I remember seeing them at places like Dixons. It was a great machine that just arrived too late.

In any case I got one and gave it some TLC. Needed some serious retrobriting and cleanup. I was able to get an 80 column card but for now I am running it through an RGB cable to and LCD and the screen looks great.

Its working great apart from one issue. I fitted a FlashFloppy Gotek as drive 0 and then the regular drive as drive 1. When I try and access drive :1 it lights up but gives a 'no sector 1' error. Formatting writes but then fails on verify. If I disconnect the gotek and change the floppy to drive 0 then it works fine, so at least I know its not the cable. Has anyone else done this? Is there a setting on the Gotek or in the FF.cfg I am missing?

Thanks in advance!

Congratulations on getting an Einstein! Can't be that common in the US i'd think.

This is the configuration I use on mine so I know it can be made to work. I don't actually have a ff.cfg on mine it's just running on the defaults so I wouldn't think that's the issue.

• Is the Gotek working, with/without the floppy attached?
• What cable are you using?
• What jumper settings do you have on the Gotek?

Hello there! Thanks for replying.

Yes the Gotek works fine with or without the second drive attached.
The cable is one I purchased from a store in the UK. Straight through cable with no twist. One connector is IDE style and the other is the older Shugart style connector.
Gotek is set to S0.

Hmm an odd one. What are the dips set like on the floppy drive? Unless there’s some sort of odd fault with the computer

They are set either d0 or d1 depending on if I want it as main drive. The other jumper is unchanged and set at the middle position.

I am wondering if the Gotek is interfering with the ready signal or something. Since the 3 inch drive works fine with the gotek unplugged using the same cable.

There was a post with someone having similar issues with an openflops. Theirs was fixed with some jumper settings.

I've had trouble before with a real floppy drive and a gotek on the same cable before but not with the Einstein.

Interesting video!

https://youtu.be/ifECczcfTd8

Nice to see some more Einstein videos!

I'd think a bigger OLED is possible in the slightly bigger faceplate of the Einstein drives ... I see a remix coming on!

arnuphis wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 18, 2023 3:56 pm

They are set either d0 or d1 depending on if I want it as main drive. The other jumper is unchanged and set at the middle position.

I am wondering if the Gotek is interfering with the ready signal or something. Since the 3 inch drive works fine with the gotek unplugged using the same cable.

There was a post with someone having similar issues with an openflops. Theirs was fixed with some jumper settings.

A warm welcome to the forum.

Worth checking that both shunts are configured for Drive 1 as per hardware manual.

A middle position jumper doesn't sound right. For further details, see:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=84

The other thing to recognise is that you'll need to keep a system disc available on the Gotek (Drive 0) as the DOS system tracks are often reloaded into RAM after disc operations. This is to preserve the integrity of the DOS in case it has been inadvertently overwritten by the disc operation. Changing the disc to a different DOS version or non-bootable disc will likely generate a disc error.

Hope that sorts out the issue.

Thanks for the suggestions! Much appreciated.
All jumpers are correct. I can sent a format command to the disk and it will do its thing but fail on verify. Unplug the Gotek and try again with the floppy as drive 0 and it works fine. So its clearly something on the Gotek. Gotek boots and loads images fine as drive zero.