Amiga 1200 Gotek with FlashFloppy external control box mod

Back in the 90s, the dream was to get all the games for my Amiga 1200 and be able to choose what to play anytime. Easier said than done, we are talking about a time before the internet even existed, and games had to come on floppies, so even space wise this was an impossible task. Flash forward to today, even after the Amiga stopped being manufuctured and sold in the late 90s, people kept coming up with new ways to upgrade and enhance their experiences on classic Amigas. One of them came in the form of the Gotek floppy emulator, which can replace the floppy drive of the Amiga with a USB loading system. The Gotek comes with 2 buttons (the up and down buttons) and a 3 digits screen.

My Gotek came with the Cortex firmware which worked like this:

You had to provide a special SELECTOR.adf in the USB stick, which you run by holding both buttons. This allows you to assign ADF files to numbers and then load them by selecting them with the up and down button, and seeing their numbers on the 3 digits screen. The problem with this system is that you had to remember which number corresponds to which adf and if you needed a new adf file, you needed to go through this process again.

But there is a better way! I found out an awesome firmware, called FlashFloppy (which can be found here : https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy) which adds some awesome functionality, including being able to traverse through directory structures to better manage your ADFs. You can find instructions on how to flash the new firmware here:

https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki/Firmware-Programming

Thankfully, once you flash FlashFloppy, you can flash updates by just using the USB drive, as described here:

https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/wiki/Firmware-Update

I used a FTDI FT232RL USB to TTL Serial Adapter Module 5V and 3.3V For Arduino G3 off Ebay to flash mine.
I also 3d printed a mount to be able to mount the Gotek inside the case. If you have access to a 3D printer, you can find the model here:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2102839

Next thing was to replace the 3 digits screen, with a full AMOLED little screen, which is supported brilliantly by the FlashFloppy firmware. I used a 0.91″ IIC I2C SPI128x32 White OLED LCD Display Module For Arduino PIC off Ebay. The little screen looks awesome and it’s detected by the firmware automatically. It shows the name of the current adf as well as the current track and sector while a disk loads.

I used a longer cable and drove the cable off the back of the Amiga. At this point, I could already use the Gotek but it looked bad and I still had to use the side buttons to control the Gotek.

We can do better right? I used a small plastic semi-transparent box from my Samsumg headphones and hotglued the screen inside.

I also opened 2 holes and stuck 2 momentary buttons. I soldered wires below the Gotek, at the original buttons points, so i could use these buttons while being able to use the original buttons if needed.