Catweasel MK4 Help

[Wraith2021]

Does anybody else have a problem getting their catweasel to work?

I am having problems, this the the PCI one for the PC runing xp with WinUAE.

I followed the instructions on how to mount it in WinUAE but still nothing, although windows device manager is not finding any problems.

Any help would be wonderfull at this stage.

[InTheSand]

Hi,

Firstly, does the Windows-based disk image tool work OK and are you able to read/write Amiga disks?

Assuming all's OK, launch WinUAE and go to the "Misc" settings page (one up from the bottom of the list) and ensure "Catweasel" is ticked on the right-hand side of the "Advanced" settings area.

Finally, grab the current multidisk.device driver from this page and follow the instructions supplied to install it within your WinUAE environment.

In theory, once you've done all that, you should be able to access your Catweasel as a "CAT:" device.

However, I've never been able to get it to read/write anything (it always says "not a DOS disk") and have to revert back to the Windows-based tool instead...

 - Ali

[Fester]

Wraith2021 wrote:

Does anybody else have a problem getting their catweasel to work?

Hi there,

I installed mine yesterday evening. Here are the steps I took to get it working.

1. Inserted the cat MK4 in the PC's PCI slot.

2. Connected the Floppy to the cat's BLACK slot, not the WHITE one.

3. Booted XP Home.

4. Inserted the supplied driver CD.

5. Once Windows XP recognized the new device installation, I let it install the drivers automatically. This step repeats itself five times before the installation is complete. Just keep on pressing "Next" until all the drivers are installed.

6. Once this was done, *** Nothing worked ***  :madashell:

7. Reviewed my hardware installation. Turns out my floppy cable was upside down. :crazy:  That is what I do. I plug everything upside down. Last month I inserted ROM chips in my 1200 upside down. I suffer from hardware dyslexia.

8. Cabled my floppy correctly and re-installed the drivers.

9. Now, my PC floppy "ticks" like the floppy in a 1200.

10. I am able to use the CWTool software to copy Amiga disks to my hard drive.

That's about all I can do with my Catweasel MK4. I just installed it late last night. I'm planning to see if it can accommodate an Amiga keyboard.  

I have no idea how to use the cat with Amiga Forever. Anyone out there with more Cat experience? I'd like to hear from you.

[Wraith2021]

Hmm, I think I've plugged my cable in the right way round but mine does not tick.

I run the program CWTools and it seems to be writing to the disk, but that happens regardless of wether the disk is write protected or not, and it tell me its not a dos disk if i try to read it.

Also my CAT is setup in workbench and mounted, it recognises the cat, but says that its not a dos disk.

I'll attempt to turn my floppy cable round tomorrow just to make sure.

[_ThEcRoW]

The drive has to tick when the emulation of workbench is active(cat device configured), otherwise, the drive should not tick on windows or under another soft, only tick under wb.
by the way, i assume that the tick you are referring is the "click clickety clik" charasteristic of amiga drives.

[InTheSand]

Fester wrote:
I have no idea how to use the cat with Amiga Forever.

See my post above yours. The key is to install the multidisk driver (link above) inside the emulated Amiga environment.

I've just done some further experiments with mine and all is well - the emulated Amiga is able to read FFS and OFS floppies! I had a mix-up with an entry in the CAT icon's tooltypes, and that was causing me problems previously.

If it helps, here's my mountlist for the CAT device (to be found in DEVS:DOSDrivers):

Device = multidisk.device
Unit = 1
Flags = 0
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
Activate = 1

Ensure the CAT icon's tooltypes are empty and multidisk.device is installed in LIBS:.

 - Ali

[Fester]

InTheSand wrote:

See my post above yours. The key is to install the multidisk driver (link above) inside the emulated Amiga environment.

Thanks for both your posts. These will be helpful. I'll be playing with this in my spare time next week.

[Fester]

_ThEcRoW wrote:

... otherwise, the drive should not tick on windows or under another soft, only tick under wb. ... i assume that the tick you are referring is the "click clickety clik" charasteristic of amiga drives.

The tick I referred to is indeed the one characteristic of Amiga drives, but mine does tick under Windows XP home, just like an Amiga drive.

Is your Catweasel connected to the motherboard FDC connector? My PC does not have a floppy controller. It's a mini-itx EPIA SP board. So the Catweasel MK IV is only sitting in the PCI slot and connected to the floppy. The cat's white FDC connector is left empty in my configuration. Perhaps this has something to do with it?

So far, I've only tested the cat under Windows XP. I was able to read Amiga disks using the CWTOOL and save them on the hard drive.

I'll play more in my spare time next week.

[adrian82]

Hi Fester,

you say, that your Catweasel makes your PC-floppy
tick like an Amiga floppy. As the Amiga needs
this ticking to detect a disk-change, does this
mean, that your PC now also detects a disk automatically ??

Adrian

[InTheSand]

Interesting... My Catweasel isn't connected to the motherboard's floppy connector (I hardly ever used it, so it seemed pointless) and the only time its heads move in/out to create a "tick" is under Amiga emulation...

Odd to have it doing that under XP!

 - Ali

[Fester]

you say, that your Catweasel makes your PC-floppy
tick like an Amiga floppy. As the Amiga needs
this ticking to detect a disk-change, does this
mean, that your PC now also detects a disk automatically ??

Hi Adrian,

Well, no my PC doesn't auto-detect floppy disks with the Cat. ha! That would be a cool feature. I haven't had much luck with the Catweasel so far. I tried using the CWTool to read a set of Amiga DD game disks. It was not able to finish the read because of read errors towards the end. I tried reading another DD disk that workds perfectly well on my 1200. It won't read that one either.

Fester

[Fester]

InTheSand wrote:
Interesting... My Catweasel isn't connected to the motherboard's floppy connector (I hardly ever used it, so it seemed pointless) and the only time its heads move in/out to create a "tick" is under Amiga emulation...

Odd to have it doing that under XP!

I just read your post and that reminded me to listen for that ticking sound. Strangely, the floppy drive isn't ticking this morning. I wonder why...

Fester

[Fester]

Fester wrote:
I have no idea how to use the cat with Amiga Forever.

InTheSand wrote:
See my post above yours. The key is to install the multidisk driver (link above) inside the emulated Amiga environment.

Ali, I tried following your instructions. I got the drivers off of Individual Computer's Support page and tried to install them too, but being such a novice with Amiga OS, I have no idea how to get this working.

Fester

[InTheSand]

Hi,

How much of a novice with AmigaOS are you? In order to install the drivers, you'll need to be able to create/edit/save text files, copy files to new locations and be able to extract the contents of an LHA file.

If you're not sure on the above, I'll create some detailed instructions of exactly what you'll need to type/do, but this'll have to wait until after the Easter weekend I'm afraid!

 - Ali

[Fester]

How much of a novice with AmigaOS are you?

I'm thinking of taking an AOS 101 class. Haven't gone past looking at the initial screen, so to speak. It's hard to change gears after decades of Windows.

If you're not sure on the above, I'll create some detailed instructions of exactly what you'll need to type/do, but this'll have to wait until after the Easter weekend I'm afraid!

Wow! That would be nice!

Fester