Catweasel MK 4????????

[Trev]

by amigakit on 2006/1/15 17:31:06

Great Idea!

I can facilitate it and host in on http://catweasel.amigakit.com

Send all tested hints, tips using the contact form. Every contributor will be creditted next to their tip.

I put together an Installer script for the Catweasel a couple years ago. I updated it after I received my MK4, so it's currently tested and working with the Catweasel ISA (via UAE and Amithlon), Catweasel MK3, and Catweasel MK4. It detects the Zorro and clock port Catweasels as well, but I don't own any of them, so I can't test that bit. While it doesn't detect the IDE-based Catweasel, it can be selected during the installation. (Bascially, detection just automates choosing between multidisk.device and catweaselisa.device when building the mount files.)

Jens (who is always extremely helpful, by the way) gave the OK to include the latest versions of multidisk.device and catweaselisa.device with the Installer script, so I don't see why I can't make the whole thing publicly available. I just need to polish it up a bit. . . .

Trev

[Trev]

As far as I know, the passthrough connector isn't implemented in the current MK4 driver. Even after it is, I'm fairly certain it won't work outside the operating system, as the PC BIOS has no way of initializing the card unless an option ROM is present, and I don't think Jens included one in the design.

The only reference to this in the manual is, "The current drivers do not give you the full functionality of the controller yet. Please check our website www.ami.ga on a regular basis to take advantage of the new functions of the Catweasel MK4." The manual then directs you to use the passthrough connector. Jens probably should have left that out of the initial release of the manual. I recommend using a separate floppy drive.

All official drivers and manuals are posted online at http://www.ami.ga/.

Trev

[Trev]

@alltens

I use three drives: a 3.5" 1.44 MB connected to my motherboard and a 3.5" 1.44 MB and a 5.25" 1.2 MB connected to the Catweasel. (Someone mentioned problems with C64 disks. They work fine for me, but using DSDD disks is a pain.) I'm using the MK4 right now, which works fine using imagetool under Windows XP. In WinUAE, I prefer the MK3 and direct access using WinIO. (I'm not sure if WinUAE 1.0+ supports the old way of accessing Catweasel controllers. I haven't checked.)

imagetool is pretty straightforward--select an image file and click write or insert a disk and click read. If you want to transfer documents from an ADF image to your PC, you'll need a tool like ADF View. (Why doesn't someone add support for the Catweasel to ADF View? ADFlib supports the file systems, so it's just a matter of adding the appropriate IO calls. Hmmm.) The process looks like this: 1) create disk image from floppy using imagetool; 2) extract files from disk image using ADF View or a similar tool.

Trev

[Trev]

You can use the CrossDOS file system with the Catweasel. Here are two sample mount files (I use PDx for double-density and PHx for high-density, but you can also modify the default PCx mount files):

/* PD0
 */

Device         = multidisk.device
Unit           = 0
FileSystem     = L:CrossDOSFileSystem
Flags          = 2
BlockSize      = 512
Surfaces       = 2
BlocksPerTrack = 9
Reserved       = 1
Interleave     = 0
LowCyl         = 0
HighCyl        = 79
Buffers        = 5
BufMemType     = 1
StackSize      = 2048
Priority       = 5
GlobVec        = -1
DosType        = 0x4D534400

/* PH0
 */

Device         = multidisk.device
Unit           = 0
FileSystem     = L:CrossDOSFileSystem
Flags          = 3
Surfaces       = 2
BlocksPerTrack = 18
Reserved       = 1
Interleave     = 0
LowCyl         = 0
HighCyl        = 79
Buffers        = 5
BufMemType     = 1
Priority       = 5
GlobVec        = -1
DosType        = 0x4D534400

EDIT:

Just a quick note. Like other disk devices, if you have multiple mount files associated with a single device, you'll see : ? icons for all mounts that don't recognize the file system, just like you do with DF0: and PC0:.