Amstrad NC200 Gotek USB Floppy Emulator Kit

USB Floppy Kit installed in an Amstrad NC200

The Simulant NC200 USB Gotek floppy disk drive kit is available from https://www.simulant.uk/shop/Amstrad-NC200-Gotek-Floppy-Emulator-usb-drive

The Amstrad NC200 portable computer has a non-standard floppy disk drive making it difficult to swap the 3.5" original floppy for a USB floppy emulator alternative. This Simulant NC200 Gotek Floppy Kit is designed to fit as a straight swap of the original disk drive, allowing files and programs to be saved to USB. The use of USB flash drives with the Amstrad NC200 makes for safer backups and an easier way to transfer files across from a PC.

Fitting Tips to install Gotek in Amstrad NC200

Fitting the Simulant Gotek kit in the Amstrad NC200 is quite straightforward as the kit is a direct swap in replacement for the internal floppy disk drive.

Great care does need to be taken though, mainly due to the case not being originally designed to be opened up! So once all the case screws are remove just be patient. Use a guitar pick, credit card or plastic spatula to gently pry the case open taking care to not snap the plastic locking tabs inside. The case surround that is at the bottom and sides of the keyboard is the most delicate area and can be easily snapped or broken. Once the case comes apart gently disconnect any internal connectors that may be in the way or stop you from opening it up fully.

Once the kit is installed and working, just log into your Simulant Shop account to download our floppy disk images for the NC200. These can be copied and renamed to make more usable disks easily. Such as nc200.img, textDocuments.img, basicPrograms.img etc etc

Simply copy these disk image files to a fat32 formatted usb stick and insert it in your NC200 gotek drive.

You can then read, write or format them from the NC built in tools (see NC200 manual link below for usage instructions).

Useful Links and Resources

Amstrad NC200 original Instruction Manual https://www.ncus.org.uk/m200.htm

PowerISO https://www.poweriso.com PowerISO is extremely useful for Gotek Floppy Emulator users as it allows you to mount and edit disk image files on a PC

Amstrad NC Users Site https://www.ncus.org.uk www.ncus.org.uk

ZCN (CP/M) Operating System https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/packages/zcn ZCN (CP/M) Operating System for Amstrad NC computers

Tim Surtell's NC page https://surtell.com/item/amstrad-nc-software Other useful software

Amstrad NC Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/pg/amstradnc/

Running native programs on the Amstrad NC200 Floppy or Gotek Drive http://cowlark.com/2017-12-04-nc200-reverse-engineering/index.html