Catweasle HELP

[amigadave]

I have not had good luck with my attempts to setup and use my new Catweasle MK IV PCI card.  First, contrary to what Software Hut told me, the Catweasle drivers DO NOT work with Windows XP x64.  Okay, my mistake for buying an OS that does not have many drivers written for it yet, so I then installed Windows XP Pro (32bit version) and was able to install the latest Catweasle drivers for the floppy drive.  I used Image Tool to read and copy a couple of Amiga floppies to adf images on my hard drive.  The next day I plugged in a joystick to see if I could use it with Amiga Forever 2005 and XP wanted more drivers for what it thought was a new VGA device.  None of the drivers included on the Catweasle CD or the drivers on their website were recognized as the correct drivers for the joystick, so I cancelled the install process and started AF2005.  No joystick control.  The bad part is now Win XP no longer sees the Catweasle as "simple communications controller" as it did when first installed.  It sees a multimedia audio controller and a vga controller, both of which have no drivers and the floppy drive no longer works.  I have found the documentation for the Catweasle to be very lacking, so I am asking here for help and advice from you experts that are already using your Catweasle controllers.

 :getmad:

[hektic]

I'm no expert and I can't help you on AF2005 as I don't have it but...

I'm not sure your setup was right in the first place as  "simple communications controller" suggests windows didn't have the driver loaded properly.

I have a [IndividualComputers Devices] in device manager, this has a device under it called Catweasel controller PCI.
The driver version is 0.1.0.9

In addition to this you should have
5 "floppy on catweasel" entries for each floppy drive you have, under [Floppy Drives] in device manager

Since your drivers are in a screwed state I would try this..

Download all your M/B drivers, LAN, VGA, CatIV etc and put them in a folder on your HD or on a CD.

delete PCI bus from under system devices in device manager
On the next reboot Windows will re-detect and install your drivers again ( may take several reboots to finish), hopefully it will go through ok this time.

Please make a backup in case it goes wrong before you attempt this and make sure you have all your drivers to hand.

Good Luck

[amigadave]

@hektic,

Thanks for the reply.  What version of Catweasle do you have?  What version of Windows are you using?  The installation paper (4 pages) from Individual Computers explains that Windows Add Hardware Wizard will find a new card of type "simple communications controller".  This happened when I first installed the card, but there has not been any "Catweasle controller PCI" in the device manager.  

I will try uninstalling the non-existant drivers and remove and replace the Catweasle card, then try installing the drivers again.

P.S.  What and/or how do you use your Catweasle?  Floppy, keyboard, joystick, mouse?  Which devices on the card do you use and how.  Do you use them with WinUAE/Amiga Forever or just from Windows?

[hektic]

I'm using 32bit XP with service pack 2 and I have the Catweasel IV.

I've only used it to read / write ADF's as I use my real amiga hardware rather then emulators most of the time.

I do use WinUAE now and again but I thought the Catweasel IV was not supported in WinUAE until the the next version but I'm not sure.

Never used AF2005 though.

[K7HTH]

I too have a suspect CW MKIV. I can get an A2000 KB to work on it in WINXP Pro. But I cannot get either type floppy (pc/amiga) to read disks. I do have five floppy devices loaded in device manager. I also cannot get the card or windows to recognize ANY of the seven Amiga mice I have to include PS2/serial mice. I use the drivers from the Individual Computers website and there is little difference from the CD drivers. The motherboard chipset is VIA and the CPU is an AMD 1GHz. Any suggestions? ...Jan?

[_ThEcRoW]

Well, the driver of the catweasel, even the latest is creating a floppy device for all the type of disks the cw can handle. I, for example, have 5 floppy devices among the catweasel itself in the hardware properties, one for the type of disk (ie: Amiga DD 880k, Amiga HD 1700K, C64 1541, PC DD 720k and PC 1440k). This is commented in the catweasel docs and will be substituted in the future with a less annoying mode of install those types. On the other hand, the catweasel support in winuae at the moment you could try the guide posted in this forum months ago, wich tells you step by step how to do it. And incredibly, the pc drive under winuae makes the clicking of the Amiga!. Support for joystick, mouse and keyboard wiil be added in the next version of winuae as well of direct disk support (with catweasel), without the need of the windows driver. I haven't tried the keyboard or the joystick port yet because i use my catweasel mainly for my Amiga 500 disks, so cannot say anything, but there are people in this board that had managed it to work.
If you don't find the catweasel under winuae tutorial posted here i could guide you through these steps.
Hope this helps.
See ya!!!!

[K7HTH]

Thanks, I will stay tuned. BTW, I run AF6 as my UAE. Like I said the CW MKIV is only good (so far) for getting an A2000 KB to work in both WINXP and AF6. The thought of a CatWeasel is more promising than its actual proformance, or lack thereof.

[amigadave]

Update - I tried reading a disk from Windows A:\, then opened the properties of the Catweasle drivers in Win XP Pro, didn't make any changes, just looked at them and closed them and then tried cilcking on the Image Tool again and it worked!  I remember reading somewhere that after the Catweasle floppy drivers are mounted the PC floppy controller can no longer access the drive until a reboot, but there was no mention of how to mount the Catweasle drivers.  I am sure there must be a simple way to do this, but I don't know it (probably something I have done twice accidentally when the Image Tool worked).  Colanto sent me a message stating that they have included drivers in the default 3.x configuration of Amiga Forever in the Storage/DosDrivers drawer.  I will be trying them out later today and will report back if I get them to work under AF2005/WinUAE.  I will get this figured out eventually.

P.S. Colanto is working on better use of the Catweasle in the future.

[K7HTH]

Thanks for the info amigadave. I will stay tuned.

-Best

kd7hth