HowTo Replace the old 3.5" floppy drive of an Roland EM-55 keyboard with an (USB-stick) GOTEK floppy emulator
Buy an Gotek Floppy Emulator
- e.g. this model SFR1M44 U100 USB Floppy Drive Emulator e.g. this one https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07DN6VTK5
- see also https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy/wiki/Gotek-Models
You also may need a USB-A (male) to USB-A (male) cable for fimware update of the emulator
- e.g. this https://www.amazon.de/PremiumCord-USB-2-0-Kabel/dp/B07NSM1XTL
- or just connect two old cables one to one as I did:
Update the firmware to https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy
- follow this guide https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy/wiki/Firmware-Programming
- also take a look here https://hxc2001.com/docs/gotek-floppy-emulator-hxc-firmware/pages/flash-a-gotek-with-a-usb-cable.html (a copy of the artery programming software can be found here!)
- and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvjgHGA9Gc8
After a bit of trial and error the following jumper settings worked for the EM-55
- format it with FAT32
As the EM-55 is able to read plain FAT discs:
- download https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy-images/releases/download/latest/FF_Images.zip and extract an empty '3.5" disc' => FF_Images.zip/FF_Images/Unformatted/IMG/1m44.img
- mount that image, format it as FAT, then put the files on it, which you want to see from the EM-55 later on
- on windows use the free OSFMount to mount an *.img file
- for linux the easiest way I found was using gnome-disk-utility:
sudo apt install gnome-disk-utility ... gnome-disk-image-mounter --writable <yourimage.img> - put the img-file to your USB-stick
- if you want multible images on the stick, add a "-number" to the filename e.g. 1m44.img, 1m44-1.img, 1m44-2.img, ...
- EM-55 compatible styles (at least the VA ones - just try)
- more styles from synthzone.com
- see page 66 of the EM-55 user manual to learn how to use external styles