Catweasel

[cbcvenice]

Preface to question: Looking for input here after reading so many opinions on the cost efectiveness and speed of using winuae on a PC versus throwing money into rare accelerators/graphics cards to rejuvinate an aging Amiga (in America here mind you).

How many of you have the catweasel hardware?  What is it best function for you?  Is it worth getting for taking old amiga disks and putting the data to Pc for use in WinUAE with Amigaforever CD software?

Lastly, would it be quicker to mount a ntfs hard drive (crossdos - I think this is possible) on amiga (A3000) load data from disks then take Hard Drive out and put on PC to use data that way?  I have many documents/graphics/music mods/games(legitimate) on Amiga disks that I want to transfer.  Oh, I guess two other options would be to get an Iomega Zip plus drive (I have ide Zip drive for PC-and an external parellel as well) or a compatible CD burner for the A3000.

Thanks for looking.
Keep Smilin! :-)
Lar

1)Amiga 3000D 16/40mbHD& 2.1gbHD/6mg ram- 2.04ks/wb
rev9, B2 313312 Re 9/03 (buster 390539-07 71 4319 5101 3G),
(WD 33C93A-PL 911B WDC PROTO).(Ramsey 390541-04 R)(DMAC 81 390537 4790 - 02)

2)Amd64-3400-Albatron FX5900xt,160Gb & 80gb HD,1gig Corsair xmspro (BIM System)
3)Amd 2800xp, radeon 9800,80gb 512valRam (both DIY/BIM systms)

[Thomas]

The Catweasel does not fully replace the need for a real Amiga with its real Amiga disk drive. The Catweasel can read and write AmigaDOS disks, but it cannot read copy-protected Amiga disks. Also the software support is quite poor. From the Windows side you can almost only create or write back ADFs, you cannot access the files on the floppy disks. Within WinUAE you can use the Catweasel as an additional disk drive. It does not replace DF0, so you cannot boot WinUAE from it, but you can access the drive. Again you can only read and write AmigaDOS disks, not copy-protected disks. At least you can access files rather than disk images.

Lastly, would it be quicker to mount a ntfs hard drive (crossdos - I think this is possible) on amiga (A3000) load data from disks then take Hard Drive out and put on PC to use data that way?

There is no NTFS driver for AmigaOS, at least none that could write to the disk. You can only use FAT partitions.

As a one-time solution this is probably the easiest. So you put the HDD into your Amiga, copy all disks and then put it back to the PC. But as a long-term solution, e.g. to use the Amiga and the PC concurrently, I'd rather prefer a network connection.

The same applies to CD writers and ZIP drives. You always have to carry the medium from one computer to the other. As the lazy person which I am I prefer to access the Amiga's drives from the PC and vice versa.

Bye,
Thomas

[motorollin]

If you are looking to just permanently migrate your data from a real Amiga to WinUAE, why don't you plug your Amiga's hard drive in to your PC and access it from within UAE? Then you can copy all your data (including WHDLoad installed games) to a virtual hard disk in UAE.

--
moto

[cbcvenice]

@Thomas - thanks for the great reply.  I'm starting to think networking the Amiga may be my best solution.  

X-surf 3 card at softhut goes for $135.00

Anything special I would need to setup A3000 with xsurf3 on a standard Linksys router?

Would the x-surf3 be the best ethernet card for A3000?

Thanks for all input here


Keep Smilin' :-)
Lar

[mindprober]

Is it just me or is accessing a real Amiga formatted hard drive under WinUAE painfully slow? I've tried an actual hard disk in the past and most recently an Amiga formatted ZIP disk. slllllllooooooooowwwwww. Perhaps I can adjust how I partitioned on the ZIP disk. Are there more optimal settings than the default (using OS 3.9's HD Tools) ?

motorollin wrote:
If you are looking to just permanently migrate your data from a real Amiga to WinUAE, why don't you plug your Amiga's hard drive in to your PC and access it from within UAE? Then you can copy all your data (including WHDLoad installed games) to a virtual hard disk in UAE.

--
moto

[mindprober]

bump

[K7HTH]

A very decent topic that needs elaboration. I agree the Catweasel MKIV is not a panacea fix to replace a true Amiga with an Amiga Forever PC. All I can ever get to interface is an Amiga keybord; forget ANY floppy, mice or joystick support modes with ANY software updates: thanks anyway, Jan. Networking and HDD migration seem to be the best methods to manipulate miggy software.  

[_ThEcRoW]

You can use amiga mice and drives with the catweasel.

[K7HTH]

_ThEcRoW wrote:
You can use amiga mice and drives with the catweasel.

Well, it says so in theory on the box anyway. After opening it is then Plug and Pray.