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Author Topic: Catweasel MK 4????????  (Read 9643 times)

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Offline madsjm

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« on: January 15, 2006, 01:27:33 PM »
That isn't really true. I am sure Catweasel MK4 has great potential and the hardware is great, but there are virtually no drivers for it. (I'm talking Windows here).

It cannot write Amiga floppies:
Ok, it can write savedisks and data disks, but it seems it cannot write any bootblocks. So transferring a game adf image to a real amiga floppy is impossible.
I tried writing a bunch of games, only to find them unbootable on my Amiga 500. I tried to install a new bootblock with my Action Replay, but it just gives a checksum error. However, if I format the floppy on the Amiga, it can install the bootblock. The only bad thing is, then you don't have the game on the floppy anymore.. :P
I've tried to write many games to floppies and then read them back in, but Catweasel always gives error messages on sector 2-20.

The passthru doesn't work:
You are supposed to be able to read Amiga and PC floppies through for example Windows Explorer. This is not possible. A: becomes unavailable when you install the Catweasel drivers. I cannot read PC floppies anymore, and Amiga floppies only as images.

Reading/writing C64 (1541) images doesn't work:
At least not for the people I've spoken to. I've never tried it on my own Catweasel.

I have tried to contact Individual Computers four times(!) with questions, but they have never replied.

To sum it up, I would never have bought the Catweasel MK4 if I knew about the lack of software support and device drivers. You get a very basic image tool, but it's almost unusable, because it doesn't even have a retry option, so reading your old floppies from the nineties becomes impossible.

If you're thinking about buying one, I suggest you wait until some proper drivers are released. It seems Individual Computers are more interested in making lots of new products than actually making the existing ones function properly.
 

Offline madsjm

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2006, 07:59:42 PM »
The most serious problem for me is that Individual Computers don't respond to my e-mails. I heard the same from another Catweasel owner. IC answered his e-mails as long as he was praising them, but as soon as he asked about C64 (1541) compatibility, they stopped responding.

I have been thinking about buying an MMC64, but I keep wondering if that also has issues like this. And with the virtually non-existing customer support, it's not really tempting anymore.
 

Offline madsjm

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2006, 08:16:11 PM »
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amigadave wrote:
@Amigakit,  I have seen and followed that post already, still no luck.  I get the message "device Cat: already mounted", but no disk icon appears on the workbench and there is no floppy activity at all.  The Cat: drive does not show up as a valid device in a shell, or in DOpus, even though when I double click on the newly created Cat DOS device, again I get the error message "device Cat: already mounted".  I don't get where I am going wrong? :-?


The cat: device is mounted automatically in startup-sequence.
I removed that, and did a mount cat:, and it seems to be ok, but when I do a dir cat:, I get
cat: is not a directory
directory not found

Whenever I try to copy files to cat:, it seems like I'm sending things to /dev/null, no disk activity at all.
 

Offline madsjm

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2006, 09:52:03 PM »
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One point I have about the imaging tool is that it doesn't wait for the disk to be spun by the drive before it starts reading/writing. E.g. it's already started reading but the drive hasn't yet rotated the disk and aligned the ... err... "pointy thing" in the drive with the corresponding slot in the disk's metal spindle to rotated it. Because of this, I usually have to start the read or write process, then stop it and restart it once the disk has been grabbed by the drive.


Thanks a lot, you made my day!  :-D
I did the same, now I can write floppies and even boot them on my A500!  :-)
 

Offline madsjm

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2006, 09:57:18 PM »
BTW: Has anyone tried the Linux drivers? Do they work better?
 

Offline madsjm

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2006, 10:38:26 PM »
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InTheSand wrote:
And... as far as I know, the Windows-based WinUAE is the only UAE to have Catweasel "support" built in...


My Linux question was actually more about mounting/reading/writing in Linux than about UAE in Linux. But I guess if you can mount the Catweasel floppies in Linux, you can automatically use them in UAE anyway?
It would be great with seamless integration in Windows aswell, if Amiga disks could be read and written as A: in Windows Explorer, I guess we wouldn't need specific support in UAE?