Catweasel MK 4????????

[amigadave]

@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? :-?

[K7HTH]

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? :-?

Perhaps better drivers will be developed to address these shortcomings. Unfortunately, more CWMKIVs will have to sell before that happens and since there are many issues at present, that may not happen in the near future. Can anyone say, "Amiga Hype"?

[madsjm]

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.

[madsjm]

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.

[InTheSand]

Hi,

I get the same problems with the Catweasel MK IV when under WinUAE, e.g. it doesn't work!

The CAT: device is mounted, and the drive even clicks periodically, stopping when a disk is inserted just like it would with a real Amiga drive.

Doing a "dir cat:" from the shell when no disk is present brings up a "No disk present in device CAT:" prompt as expected.

However, doing a "dir cat:" with a known working Amiga OFS or FFS 880Kb disk in the drive brings up a "Not a DOS disk in device CAT:" prompt, even though the Windows-based Catweasel image program is able to read this disk.

Formatting a blank DD disk with "format drive cat: name test noicons ffs" goes throught the formatting process (very slowly!) right up to where the disk is initialised, and then states "Format Failure: not a valid DOS disk".

Anyhow, despite all this, the very basic Windows-based imaging tool works fine, and allows the creation of ADF files from Amiga floppies, and the creation of Amiga floppies from ADFs which then work fine in my real Amigas.

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.

I'm using the Catweasel with a Pentium 4, and the drive connected to it is a Sony 3.5" HD, this being the sole drive and connected to the middle connector. The drive is for the Catweasel's use only (I've not used the passthru feature from the motherboard's drive connector).

My UAE configuration for testing this is roughly A1200-ish, 2Mb chip, AGA, 32Mb RAM, 68040, with KS 3.0 and WB 3.0.

Finally, in response to a question above about Amiga hard disks - you don't need a Catweasel to do this. Instead, you can just read/write Amiga hard drives with UAE. Search the forums for one of the existing threads on that topic.

 - Ali

[madsjm]

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!  :-)

[madsjm]

BTW: Has anyone tried the Linux drivers? Do they work better?

[InTheSand]

[madsjm]

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?

[InTheSand]

Having everything available through A: would be nice, but I guess that'd require seriously complicated driver development... Besides, UAE expects the Amiga side of things to handle the drive access and decoding, so this probably wouldn't be the solution.

Although it doesn't talk to the Catweasel, you may find ADF View of use, if you've not already got it. I've created and modified quite a few ADF files with this, prior to using the Catweasel to write the ADFs out to real disks.

The most recent Linux drivers seem to be here. Unfortunately, my Catweasel is in my Windows machine rather than my Linux one, so I'm not really in a position to try it.

Mounting an Amiga disk appears to be possible (assuming the Linux distro being used has "AFFS" (Amiga FFS) support built
in).

The documentation states that the Catweasel drive can be used as DF0: within UAE: "Start uae with the parameter "-0 /dev/cw0amigadd".  Don't forget to eject the disk using the UAE GUI before actually removing it from the drive!"

Next time I reinstall Windoze on this PC, I'll leave some space for a Linux partition... But in the mean time, has anyone else had any success with the Linux / Catweasel / UAE combination?

 - Ali

[amigadave]

Obvious to me that a "Catweasle Installation & Trouble Shooting FAQ" is badly needed.  Any volunteers?  Could be a group effort.  I will even volunteer to compile it from entries of several persons after testing each item to be included in the FAQ.  It is also obvious from what others have written that the developer is not going to provide such a FAQ or detailed support for those of us still unable to enable partial or full use of the Catweasle cards.

Any takers?

[amigakit]

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.

[Tomas]

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.

Yes you can! This device is enabling your pc to read/write amiga formatted floppies just like on the amiga itself, so you can easily write/extract an adf image into a real physical floppy that works on the amiga.

[Tomas]

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.

Are these floppies DD?? If not, then try to cover the extra hole with a bit of tape. I am not sure if this is needed with the catweasel, but it is definitely needed when trying to format in 720k format on a pc using HD floppies.

[Tomas]

Wondering if the Catweasel MK 4 could read an Amiga formatted hard drive or just floppies ??

A pc can read amiga formatted floppies just fine, as long as you have the proper drivers/filesystem installed. I believe that filsystem drivers are not needed when using winuae with a  amiga partitioned HD.

[K7HTH]

amigakit wrote:
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.

Good Job, amigakit! We now have a start to get what we have paid dearly for to finally operate!!!!