Cursed Stick Uses an ESP32 to Send Amiga Floppy Images to a Gotek Drive Over Wi-Fi

David Smith reveals Cursed Stick, an ESP32-S3 hardware hack presenting virtual FAT16 USB storage to Gotek floppy emulators for seamless over-the-air ADF uploads.

Developer David Smith has published an inventive hardware project called Cursed Stick, designed to eliminate one of the more tedious aspects of using modern floppy-drive replacements with vintage computers. The project received specialist coverage on October 9 and addresses a problem familiar to Gotek users: transferring disk images often involves repeatedly removing a USB memory stick, connecting it to another computer and carrying it back to the vintage machine. Cursed Stick replaces that physical transfer process with an ESP32-based device that presents itself to the Gotek as ordinary USB mass storage. Disk images are uploaded over Wi-Fi through a browser interface or command-line utility, after which the device updates its virtual filesystem and prompts the Gotek to recognise the new files. The implementation uses an ESP32-S3 or compatible controller with native USB device support, LittleFS storage and a dynamically generated FAT16 filesystem. The current design is deliberately read-only from the Gotek's perspective to avoid conflicts involving simultaneous file access. Its available flash storage accommodates approximately eleven uncompressed ADF images, depending on the hardware configuration. The prototype currently uses a development board, while a more compact USB-A implementation remains a future goal. Source code and technical documentation are publicly available. The project is particularly appealing because it improves the experience of using authentic hardware without requiring extensive modifications to the original computer. A Commodore Amiga can continue believing it is reading floppy disks while a tiny modern microcontroller quietly handles wireless file transfers. The arrangement is technologically ridiculous in the most productive possible way. Forty years of progress have finally eliminated the exhausting journey between a desk and a USB port.