Roland G-1000 with a Gotek

I had a Roland G-800 for a long time years ago. They are really cool keyboards. So when I came across this G-1000 which was very cheap I bought it.

This model came out in 1998 and it was the top of the line arranger keyboard of that time. I think this thing cost around 2000 – 2500 euro’s back then. An absolute beast of a keyboard for professional use. Loaded with professional styles and around 600 instruments to choose from today it still sounds very good. It has 76 semi weighted keys and it plays absolutely brilliant. The G-1000 has a built in IOMega Zip100 drive and a 1,44Mb floppydrive. The Zipdrives always seem to be broken in these (and this G-1000 is no exception, the Zipdrive is dead as a doornail) but I still had a half finished Gotek floppy emulator lying around from a previous failed attempt to install that in a Roland E-86.

So, this G-1000 powers on, plays but it’s freaking dirty and the Zip drive doesn’t work. Bought it, took it home and disassembled it.

For some reason a familiar sight in my kitchen 🙂

I first removed the keybed and threw all keys in warm soapy water to remove 20+ years of dirt. I vacuumed the insides of the G-1000 and removed both the Zip drive and the floppy drive.

Although the Zip drive was connected to power (and still had a Zip disk in it) it wasn’t working and it didn’t show up in the menu of the G-1000. When you want to load a Midi file or Style you can normally choose between Internal, Zip and FDD. Zip didn’t even show as an option. I don’t intent to use the Zip drive any more so I removed the Zip disk (super handy that they put the hole you poke with a bent paperclip on the back of the drive…) and reinstalled the Zip drive.

Cleaned the frontpanel of the keyboard numerous times (it was dirrrrrrrrrty) and assembled the keybed. It’s so nice and clean again 🙂

Right. The Gotek. Years ago someone came up with a replacement thing for machines that still use 3,5″ floppy disks like industrial CNC machines, sewing machines and what not. This 300 dollar device was swiftly copied by the Chinese and is now available for 15 euro’s on sites like AliExpress.

This works in pretty much everything with a floppydrive including keyboards / synthesizers and Amiga’s. The Amiga seems to be a field where the Gotek is used alot and therefore there a many online forums / sites that will tell you how this works. They have even written new firmware for the Gotek which allows for hardware mods and even more compatibility (like HxC and Flashfloppy).

This is what a standard Gotek looks like:

You have to format a USB stick with a special piece of software so that it contains 1000 partitions. You can then store (also via this program) files in each partition. When you insert the USB stick in the Gotek it will display 000 in the 3 digit display. You can now access the contents of that virtual floppy on your keyboard. There are 2 buttons: one button increments the partition by one and the other one by 10. So when you are are floppy 056 and you want to go back to 011 well.. not great.

Enter Flashfloppy! This will make your life easier. Flashfloppy is new firmware for the Gotek which allows hardware modifications among other things. You can get rid of the 3 digit display and install a nice Oled display. You can also add a rotary encoder (that’s just a knob you can turn) to scroll through the contents of the USB stick. Once done it looks like this:

In the display you can see filenames and directory structures and the big knob on the right (which also has a push function) allows you to easily navigate the contents of your USB stick. Much better. To get to this point all you have to do is follow these easy steps:

• Buy any Gotek from AliExpress that has a 3 digit display (so skip the 2 digit ones)
• Wait 2 months for it to arrive
• Once arrived dismantle (only 3 or 4 screws)
• Solder the missing header pins to the IO ports on the back of the drive
• Use Dupont wires to connect a TTL USB adapter to the new header pins
• Flash a new bootloader to the Gotek drive
• Disconnect the TTL USB adapter
• Get Flashfloppy
• Install Flashfloppy via a USB stick onto the Gotek
• Order a 0,91inch Oled display from AliExpress
• Wait 2 months 🙂
• Use a Dremel to modify the enclosure of the Gotek so the Oled fits
• Print the following part on a 3D printer
• Install the Oled with the 3D printed part using hot glue
• Drill a hole below the word Gotek in the enclosure
• Install a rotary encoder
• Use HxCFE_DosDiskBrowser to create .IMG files containing Midi and Style files
• Enjoy!

Don’t worry, if you have basic soldering skills and order all the parts at once you can build this for under 20 euro’s and the whole process will only take an hour (or 2, or 4)

Just follow Keirs excellent instructions on his Flashfloppy page.

Now, the Gotek has about 2 billion (mostly software) configuration options. I couldn’t figure it out on the E-86 but on the G-1000 it was very simple: Put a jumper on S1 and there is no need for any software settings in the FF.CFG file. (so don’t put a FF.CFG file on the USB stick) That’s it! It works like a charm on my G-1000.

No more noise from the drive and selecting stuff goes faster. The G-1000 thinks there is still a floppy drive connected to it so the transfer speed isn’t really faster but there is no wait time for the drive to spin up so when you go to load a style you would normally see the list of available styles on the disk ‘grow’ with each ‘read’ noise the original drive makes (if you know what I mean..). Now: instant file list. Only when you select a style it still takes a second or 2 to load it.

Very big improvement compared to the original floppy drive. The Gotek also makes the Zip drive obsolete so I don’t care it doesn’t work.

A few photo’s of the Gotek modifications:

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Any questions? Feel free to ask or visits Keir Fraser’s Facebook group ‘Flashfloppy’. He is very helpful 🙂

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