Gotek for the IBM 5170

The Gotek floppy disk emulator is a great product and enables to relive most of the retro computer including the famous 5170.

One of the big challenges to have the gotek to work is the BIOS configuration. the IBM 5170 genuine BIOS of more recent version can support various floppy format such as

360 K
720 K
1.2 M
1.44 M

If you plan to have your gotek to work with your IBM 5170, you absolutely need to have the BIOS settings inline with your gotek image to be booted, I have spend hours to make it working… In other words, if your bios is set to 720 K drive, you will never boot a 1.44 gotek image. The good news is that the gotek with the fast floppy firmware automatically detect the format of the image to boot.

Assuming, you have successfully boot your system with your Gotek, now you might want to have a nice enclosure to perfectly fit your 5170.

The Gotek has a nice (really ?!?) plastic 3.5” enclosure with a 2 buttons and 8 bar led display.

My goal was to design and build a 5.25” enclosure for the Gotek with a 0.96” Old display and a rotary switch, and lastly to have a similar plastic cooler tone to the IBM 5170.

The end result is pretty good and below are the source file and the BOM for this project.

The BOM is the following

0.96 OLED SSD1306 display https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005007389730469.html?channel=twinner
KY040 Rotary switch https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005008233252585.html?channel=twinner
Print 3D PLA Amazon Basic light Gray

Regarding the 3D printing, my approach for the main part was to split into 2 parts to have a nice front panel and be able to print the base with the right orientation.

I glue the 2 pieces after printing.

The Knob is also custom made and fit perfectly the Rotary switch head, just applying some force.

The Fusion 3D file