Kawai Q55 working with FF and SFRM72-DU26 gotek

[avelor-76]

Just wanted to report my successful install of a gotek drive with flashfloppy firmware on a Kawai Q55 sequencer.
I could not find any info on the net for this hardware, so I had to proceed a bit blindly.
Firstly, I got a slim SFRM72-DU26 gotek to replace the original 26 pin floppy drive. Note that the 26 pin flat cable of the gotek is narrower than the motherboard connector, so I had to build a small converter (see photo, I guess cleaner solutions are available for purchase…).
To install flashfloppy I removed RA, RB, RC resistors and all jumpers except S1 as described here #155, then flashed STM32 firmware via USB. I also added the green led, and display jumper connectors that were missing on the gotek board.
The gotek is slightly slimmer than the mechanical floppy, leaving some space that is actually handy to pass the display wires through and leave the green led visible.

Everything seems to work well in native mode. The sequencer can format DSDD disks in both proprietary (“Q55”) and DOS (“SMF”) modes. The DOS mode works with both HFE and IMG (720Kb) images. I could only get native Q55 format work with HFE images (I guess this is normal?).
The green led is always on, but gets brighter on read/write. The red led is also on but does not show any activity. The USB stick led is permanently blinking when using HFE images (this does not occur using IMG files).

P.S.
I also quickly tested the native gotek SFRM72-DU26 firmware. It also seems to work to some extent, reading SMF MIDI files from a FAT32 USB stick, without having to use images which can be handy in some situations.
It does not support Q55 format mode, though. Format/write in DOS mode might work but I didn’t try it, as I prefer using flashfloppy anyway.

Below a Video showing the sequencer loaded with a HFE image (note the USB stick led permanently blinking in this case)

IMG_6935.MOV