How to format a USB to use in a floppy emulator drive in a Haas VF3?

Hi, I bought a 2001 Haas VF3 that has a GOTEK "floppy emulator" ( I think that's what it is called) to replace the floppy drive so it can use a USB stick to load programs in the machine. I have a program to run but it wont load. Doing some research it looks like the USB stick must be "formatted" to look like a floppy disk to the machine? Then there are two buttons and a 0 to 99 readout on the emulator that you pick what program number you want to load?

I am NOT good at all with computer stuff, I've tried online to format the usb but I'm getting no where.

If anybody could walk me through how to format the usb then load a program that would be awesome.. I also posted this in the general section. Thank you.

If that's the same unit I have then this is how it works. Turn the VF3 off. Then, with the USB stick plugged in, hold one of the buttons down (I forget which one) and turn the machine back on. The display on the emulator should count up to 99 and then you'll be good.

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Just tried it with two different usb thumb drives and no go... Tried every combination of buttons and turning it on and off.

I worked on it all day today and had three other people try also and no go. So I converted it back to a floppy drive and it works fine now. I had a bunch of old programs on floppys from my old job and they load great. I do have a new program a guy wrote me yesterday that wont load but there must just be something wrong with the post or something? Slowly getting this figured out and hope to make some chips SOON!! Thanks to all those that tried to help.

My TM-1 floppy drive died so I replaced with a USB. The Program I use to format the USB is called "CNC Floppy Emulation Manager Tool V3.500". Its also used to put the files on to the USB. It formats the floppy to act like there are numerous floppy disc spaces on the USB, that is what the numbers correlate to. When I load a program on to the USB I tell it to go to space 01. Then, on the machine, the USB drive is also set to 01. Hope this clears it up, it took me a while but it was well worth it.

What size of thumb drive were you using? Manu of those types of systems (sorry, not familiar with that specific one) will only work with drives formatted with a FAT filesystem.

If you have a larger drive (>32gb), it is most likely formatted for NTFS. The easiest thing to do in that case is just buy a smaller one (should be less that $10). It sounds like anything over a gig should be more than your system can use anyway.

If you have a drive you like and want to reformat it for FAT and give up the extra space, there are utilities for that too.

The prognosis does not look too great.

Here is a link showing the technical implementation of how the data is stored on a generic one:

Review: Unbranded 1.44Mb USB 1-floppy emulator | Gough's Tech Zone

Comparing that to the review and testing of the Gotek, it seems likely that it uses the same method:

Virtual Floppy Drive – Part II – Testing Gotek | Fun with virtualization

Bottom line there is that you will need a FAT thumb drive and either a second floppy emulator for your PC or the proprietary software in order to actually load any conpatible data onto the flash drive.

I have an industrial-type single-board computer running a DOS variant that does USB drives. It will only accept smaller drives (I think 2 gig or less) and must be formatted as FAT (16, though not labeled as such) rather than FAT-32 or NTFS.

Worth a try, although it may not apply to your situation...

Chip

It's real easy to format your usb. put in a usb port in your computer. Click on computer. You will see your usb as a device in the removable storage sector. Don't open it. Right click on it then wait a sec. You'll see a pop up box. Click on the format icon and hit start for quick format. hope this helps.

Eric

Chip Chester said:

I have an industrial-type single-board computer running a DOS variant that does USB drives. It will only accept smaller drives (I think 2 gig or less) and must be formatted as FAT (16, though not labeled as such) rather than FAT-32 or NTFS.

Worth a try, although it may not apply to your situation...

Chip

Click to expand...

The FAT16 vs FAT32 is something that is likely to trip you up as well. That was a good point. Rufus (Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way) is a good program for testing out various formatting options on a drive. The windows gui will only let you pick the file formats it thinks are your best options.

Doing some more research on a variety of these emulators, there appear to be several methods in use to encode the different disks.

The one I linked above uses slightly more memory than the size of the disk itself because it is just writing to memory locations and ignoring all the metadata. The manual for CNC Floppy Emulation Manager Tool that th90 mentioned says that it requires 7mb per disk and is compatible with floppy disk images.

You could spend a while trying various bits of software to make it work, but given your comment about not being a computer person, I think you would be better off buying a pair of new ones. Put one in the machine and one in your computer. That way you can use the selector on the front to pick what disk you want to be using and treat it like a physical disk (drag/drop files, etc).

If you use an interface program like the disk emulator, you will have to jump through the hoops of using that to manually load the files through their interface. It is certainly doable, but the added effort and room for error might not be worth the cost of just buying a second emulator.

Hi there, I as well bought a USB emulator to replace the floppy on my Haas VF-1. My first question is what jumpers on the Gotek emulator need to be in use?

MMD said:

Hi there, I as well bought a USB emulator to replace the floppy on my Haas VF-1. My first question is what jumpers on the Gotek emulator need to be in use?

Click to expand...

Just installed one a couple of weeks ago. If I remember correct, just how it can out of the box.
J5>JA
SO>SO

They have a tool on their website for formatting the USB:
Download - GoTek USB Floppy Emulator Manufacturer Factory

I just installed one:

I formatted the usb by turning off the entire mill at the control. Then plugged in the usb into the Gotek. Then turned on the mill while holding both buttons on the Gotek. This started a count-up from 001 to four hundred and something (depends on size of usb).

I saved the file on the computer using standard naming convention. In my case I used “Test.NC” when I posted out. This wrote to sector 1 on the USB. I ensured the Gotek had #1 showing on the display.

Inserted the USB, hit “list program”; then typed “Test.NC”; then hit receive. Just like that the program came in. No problems.


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Firstly make sure the thunk bribe is a fat5 format (the old format)
If in question use a smaller older drive like a 2gb. All older ones (10 year old) will be the right format

Mine I just had to put the drive in the emulator
and hold the 2 buttons for 20 seconds.
It did the rest (number indicator displayed the “partitions it was making indicating it was in process)
Took a while.
Had a coffee and it was done