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Author Topic: Catweasel MK 4????????  (Read 9624 times)

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Offline EdponTopic starter

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Catweasel MK 4????????
« on: October 07, 2005, 07:49:25 AM »
Hi,
  This might have been answered a million times already, but what on earth is a Catweasel MK 4 used for exactly?  Taking your Amiga disks into the Windows environment then transferring them to a cd or something?  Also, I'm being lead to believe that these things can some how take a ROM image, like the retro gaming images from certain websites you can download, and transfer them to an actual working Amiga Game disk. If this is true, I'd love to hear from you all.  Thanks.

Ed
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Offline Darklight

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #1 on: October 07, 2005, 07:54:49 AM »
Basically it interfaces between your PC and a floppy drive to enable it to read and write Amiga disks.  Normally, PC floppy controllers can't handle the Amiga format, this allows the PC to do it.  And yes, I believe it is possible to write ADF's to disk using a Catweasel.
 

Offline odin

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #2 on: October 07, 2005, 01:37:52 PM »
However the truly cool part of this card is the possibility of real SiDs!

Offline amigadave

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #3 on: October 07, 2005, 02:53:05 PM »
The Catweasle Mk 4 is a PCI card that has a floppy disk controller and drivers to read and write to many different formats from Windows OS.  It also has a keyboard connector and driver to use an Amiga keyboard, two ports for Amiga mouse and joysticks with drivers in development and a socket on board to accept one or two SID sound chips from the C=64.

I don't know anything about the ROM image question.
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Offline SHADES

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #4 on: October 07, 2005, 02:56:29 PM »
Hmm what was the site to order one of these again and can I get a PCI
(PC box) version of this??
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Offline _ThEcRoW

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #5 on: October 07, 2005, 02:58:12 PM »
Yes, you can write back those adf's to disks, then use it on your amiga. And the inverse too.
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Offline madsjm

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #6 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 amigakit

Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #7 on: January 15, 2006, 01:32:20 PM »
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Offline _ThEcRoW

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #8 on: January 15, 2006, 01:53:36 PM »
I have writed a lot of games for my 500 since i got the card and all of them worked perfectly. I don't understand your problem. It is true that the driver is not polished out yet, but it's usable and you can read and write amiga disks perfectly, even with winuae you can read and write disks as you would do it on a real amiga, being useful when you don't need to write an entire image but a few files.
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Offline Oliver

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #9 on: January 15, 2006, 02:37:24 PM »
Has anyone here use the SID chip functionality of the catweasel?  What software control is offered?  I bought some SIDs a while back for a DIY synth, but it's gone the way of most of my hobbies, and lies in a box in my workshop.
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Offline DaBest

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #10 on: January 15, 2006, 04:41:41 PM »
Wondering if the Catweasel MK 4 could read an Amiga formatted hard drive or just floppies ?? :-?
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Offline K7HTH

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #11 on: January 15, 2006, 05:50:20 PM »
Quote

madsjm wrote:
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.


Ditto. My EXACT problems with the MKIV!
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Offline amigadave

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #12 on: January 15, 2006, 06:25:27 PM »
@ThEcRoW,  it appears from this thread that you are one of the few that have been able to use your catweasle to successfully write adf's to a floppy that will boot in your Real Amiga, and you have been able to mount the catweasle floppy to work from within WinUAE.  Can you provide some instruction to the rest of us that have not been so lucky yet.  I can create adf's from Amiga floppies and write them to my PC hard drive for use with WinUAE, but that is it so far.  What I would like most right now is to be able to read & write files from the catweasle floppy from WinUAE, just like it was DF1: to DF3:.  I don't care if I can boot from it as DF0:
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Offline amigakit

Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #13 on: January 15, 2006, 06:47:12 PM »
@AmigaDave

Heres the information for the Catweasel MK4 that you need:

Download multidisk.device and copy it to your DEVS: directory.

Add new dosdriver to your DEVS:DosDrivers (for example named "CAT") containing following lines:

   Device = multidisk.device
   Unit = 1 /* 0 = connector at the middle, 1 = connector at the end of floppy cable */
   Flags = 0 /* format #0 = Amiga DD */
   Surfaces = 2
   BlocksPerTrack = 11
   Reserved = 2
   mask = 0x7ffffffc
   MaxTransfer = 0x00200000
   Interleave  = 0
   LowCyl = 0
   HighCyl = 79
   Buffers = 5
   BufMemType = 0
   StackSize = 4096
   Priority = 5
   GlobVec = -1

Now you can mount the catweasel device by
typing "mount cat:" in to shell window.

Creating adf-files from Amiga floppies:

insert empty adf to DF0: and type "diskcopy cat: to df0: noverify"

Writing adf-files to Amiga floppies:

insert source adf to DF0: and type "diskcopy df0: to cat:"
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Offline amigadave

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Re: Catweasel MK 4????????
« Reply #14 on: January 15, 2006, 07:36:14 PM »
@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? :-?
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