Amiga.org

Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Antiriad on March 20, 2014, 05:34:42 PM

Title: Catweasel MK5 in the works from icomp.de?
Post by: Antiriad on March 20, 2014, 05:34:42 PM: About a year ago (almost to the day) I had contacted icomp.de inquiring about the availability of the Catweasel Floppy Controller for PC Platform. The response I got was the following:

"Thank you for your request. We have indeed planned a new version of the Catweasel, but I cannot give any release date. There's just loose plans to start a new development in the second half of 2013."

Do anyone have any more info on this pending release?

It seem that right now there are only 2 solutions for reading/writing raw floppy disk Images which are the following:

1) Kryoflux (about $120)
2) SuperCard Pro (by Jim Drew of http://www.cbmstuff.com)

It seems that the SuperCard Pro might have better support and better resolution that Kryoflux. However I might like more the idea of a Windows 7/8 Compatible Catweasel with dual SIDs and WinUAE Compability.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks

Mike
Title: Re: Catweasel MK5 in the works from icomp.de?
Post by: billt on March 20, 2014, 05:53:26 PM: Other than Jens himself, I suspect you are the goto expert on this rumor which you've just started.
Title: Re: Catweasel MK5 in the works from icomp.de?
Post by: JimDrew on March 23, 2014, 11:02:37 PM: There is support for the SuperCard Pro images in WinUAE (as well as E-UAE and FS-UAE).
Title: Re: Catweasel MK5 in the works from icomp.de?
Post by: danbeaver on March 24, 2014, 12:46:49 AM: The Kryoflux now has Amiga support (see OS4Depot).

@Antiriad What do you mean by resolution?
Title: Re: Catweasel MK5 in the works from icomp.de?
Post by: Antiriad on March 24, 2014, 05:45:06 PM: Quote from: danbeaver;761188
The Kryoflux now has Amiga support (see OS4Depot).

@Antiriad What do you mean by resolution?

Sorry for not being very precise.

The Supercard uses 25ns flux capture resolution, where Kryoflux uses a 41.66ns resolution. I do not know how this effects the Image size since I do not own either so that I can compare. This info I believe is captures in a .scp Image.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=72733&page=3
Title: Re: Catweasel MK5 in the works from icomp.de?
Post by: danbeaver on March 24, 2014, 07:38:32 PM: I would assume that a shorter waveform capture time gives a higher accuracy of sampling, in this case about 40% more information; it is possible that this represents a larger file size, but in today's world of terabyte capacities, I find this unlikely an issue. In checking, though, the SuperCard Pro has software that currently only runs on a PC
Title: Re: Catweasel MK5 in the works from icomp.de?
Post by: Antiriad on March 25, 2014, 04:16:01 PM: Quote from: danbeaver;761210
I would assume that a shorter waveform capture time gives a higher accuracy of sampling, in this case about 40% more information; it is possible that this represents a larger file size, but in today's world of terabyte capacities, I find this unlikely an issue. In checking, though, the SuperCard Pro has software that currently only runs on a PC

I found some more Interesting Info on abime.net
It seems that the raw Image for a Supercard Image card can be x3 the size of a Cryoflux Image. Seems like an overkill to me.

SCP stores the raw data as 16 bits per flux transition... that's a LOT of data.

=====================================
Original file sizes: 5.53mb CTR vs 15.2mb SCP

RAR'd CTR 3.1mb vs RAR'd SCP 2.65mb
7zip'd CTR 2.85mb vs 7zip'd SCP 2.16mb
Title: Re: Catweasel MK5 in the works from icomp.de?
Post by: danbeaver on March 25, 2014, 04:32:26 PM: My home server has 10 TB of storage, my A4000T has 72 GB, my X1000 has 4 TB, so I think it will be OK.