Step 1
If you have purchased the Gotek Floppy drive Emulator via Gotek.nl, you already have the most recent version of Flashfloppy on it, if you have purchased it via another channel, you must first check whether Flashfloppy is already installed, and whether that is the most recent version.
Step 2
Take an empty USB stick (somewhere between 128 MB and 32 GB, I prefer 4-8 GB, that is more than enough for any normal person 🙂) Format it in FAT32 (Flashfloppy does not support NTFS, EXFAT or other file systems .
Step 3
If you want to do it yourself : copy the AUTOBOOT.HFE and the HXCSDFE.CFG from the latest Flashfloppy release file to the root of the newly formatted USB Stick. Then create a Directory structure with games, tools, music, paint etc. etc. , and depending on how many files you put in it you also create alphabet directories, so that if you want to load zaxxon you successively choose Games, Z, zaxxon in instead of scrolling through 10 pages (or more) of games…
But if you want a simple start, download the Amiga start kit from my website, which contains a fairly recent (but not the newest) version of the above-mentioned files, a simple setup of a disk menu structure and a number of ADF files so that you can directly can get started. If you want more than you copy a number of ADF files yourself and you have a working environment, and the fun can begin …
Step 4
Now it's time to load a disk, boot your amiga with slot 0 (000) selected. This will load AUTOBOOT.HFE (hardcoded to slot 000). When autoboot is loaded you will see the disk structure as placed on the USB stick, using the cursor keys (up/down for scrolling, left/right for page scrolling) and Enter for directory/File selection. You walk through the directories until you come across the file you want to play, stand on the file, press enter and you will get a new screen with disk slots. Now place the game you selected in a slot (1 to 999) and hit enter again, that will bring you back to the directory structure and you are ready to select your next game, you do that until you think now I have everything I need.
(Don't immediately fill 500 slots, because after a year you still have no idea what is on your stick. It is better, for example, to place 10-25 favorite games in the slots numbered 1-25, your favorite top 10 tools 10 tools from 101 to 110, etc., that way you know after a couple of times which number you want and you can simply direct the gotek select the desired image. Otherwise you will always will be the car boot must first to see which slot already had the game you wanted to load.)
Then press F10 , your list of slots will be saved and you can choose 001 to 999 on the gotek to activate the slot you just filled
Think of the boot menu's slots system as a floppy disk drive with 100 preset slots, when you boot you pick one of those slots and that disk loads as if it were booting a floppy.
Of course your Gotek disk must be DF0:, so internally connected, or externally and then created via a boot selector df0:
Step 5
Step 5 is one that is often forgotten and that is oh so important: Suppose you have spent a day renaming ADF files, testing them, sorting them by category and alphabet, filling your locks and you are all set. Then what is step 5? , that's right … you are now making a backup of the contents of the USB Stick somewhere on your PC. The filled slots are kept in a file and if for some reason your USB Stick gets corrupted or lost, then you just have the structure and your filled slots at hand to put on a new USB Stick so you can continue happily. where you left off.