CATWEASEL MK4 PCI

[Darrin]

I ordered a Catweasel Mk4 PCI card from Amigakit several months ago and finally got around to fitting it into my trusty old eMachine T6420 running Windows XP.

For those not familiar with the Catweasel family, they are a series of floppy controllers that allow normal floppy drives to read and write to and from a multitude of formats.  From an Amiga user's point of view, it allows you to use a PC to read Amiga floppy disks to make ADF images (including "corrupt" disks that your Amiga might have trouble reading) and to write ADF images back to a blank floppy all using a standard PC floppy disk.

In the box you get the following:

Catweasel PCI card
Cable to connect PC floppy controller to Catweasel
Cable to connect Catweasel to two floppy drives
3.5" to 5.25" floppy cable adapter
CD ROM containing drivers, software and "read me" files
4 page "idiots guide" to installing hardware

The Catweasel also has sockets for attaching two C64 SID chips, an Amiga keyboard port and two Amiga/C64 joystick/mouse/paddle ports.  I've not got around to trying these yet with any emulation packages.

I bought the card primarily to write back *.D64 and *.ADF files back to Amiga 3.5" and 1571 5.25" floppy disks for use on real Amigas and C64s/C128s.  My first task was to track down a couple of suitable drives as my tower had no floppy drive built in.  The 3.5" drive came from an old Pentium 120MHz tower and the 5.25" drive came from an even older 486 desktop that had been gathering dust on my shelves.

I had a free 5.25" drive bay in the tower and when I prized the front panel off the card readers I found a hidden 3.5" bay below it.  On the motherboard itself I also found a floppy controller port, but as I didn't intend to read PC disks from Windows I didn't bother to connect it.

I fitted the floppy cable to the Catweasel and then carefully connected the cables to the 3.5" and 5.25" drives (using the adapter for the 5.25" drive) making sure to have the red stripe on the cable lined up to pin 1 on each drive.  The 3.5" drive attached to the end of the cable and the 5.25" drive attached to the center connector.  This allowed the 3.5" in appear as "Drive A: (Unit 1)" and the 5.25" to be "Drive B: (Unit 0)".

I then installed the Catweasel in a spare PCI slot and switched on the computer (at this point I did not connect the power leads to the drives because I forgot!  Doh!).  Windows picked up the new hardware and each time it prompted for drivers (the card, the keyboard connector, the ports) I redirected the search to the CD ROM drive containing the drivers.  I then powered the system down, connected the power connecters to the floppy drives, powered back up and watched as Windows detected the 2 drives.  Once again I redirected the request for the drivers to the CD ROM.

The CD ROM has two versions of Imagetool for handling the reading and writing of disks.  After looking at both I settled on the fancier Imagetool3 which pops up a simple to use interface where you can easily decide which drive to use and whether you want to write real disks, make image files, etc.

For my first test I decided to write back the 2 ADF images of "Wings" to a couple of old Amiga disks.  In turn, I loaded each image from the ADF files, selected the 3.5" drive, inserted a disk and selected "write to disk".  I watched the graphics display as the disk was written and verified and then tested both disks in my A3000.  They worked perfectly.  I then decided to try and make a copy of "Elite" which was always a pain on the Amiga without using hardware dongles or advanced coying software.  Once again it spat out a fully working 3.5" floppy for the A3000.

I then switched to the 5.25" drive and used the software to format a C64 floppy and to read a 5.25" disk containing "Red Storm Rising" and it is here where I’m having problems.  Everything on the Imagetool screen seems to go well, but the “produced disks don’t work.  I finally formatted a SSDD floppy on the 1571 and verified that it was OK, a put it in the 5.25” drive attached to the Catweasel, loaded Ghostbusters D64 file and wrote it back to the floppy.  I watched as the drive hummed and clicked and the screen showed the blocks being written.  I then put it back in the 1571 and tried to load it with no luck.  A check of the directory showed an empty formatted disk.  Perhaps it’s just this ancient 5.25” drive.  I can still write images to disk using the MMC Replay and the real 5.25”, but this problem is a mystery to me.

[alexh]

Nice review. One question. How long does it take to write an 880Kbyte disk? Is it roughly 1/2 the time it takes to write an ADF using an Amiga?

I do so wish that Jens had been able to find the time to partner with SPS and WinUAE authors to get the MK4 doing all the things that were originally promised. Reading and writing copy protected disks. Direct support within WinUAE.

You never know perhaps he'll find the enthusiasm now that Richard Aplin (the guy who made the X-Copy Cyclone) is considering entering the market with an open source USB->FDC called Cyclone 20. It's just early talk at the moment but very impressive work for such a short time.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=40959

[redrumloa]

I finally formatted a SSDD floppy on the 1571 and verified that it was OK, a put it in the 5.25” drive attached to the Catweasel, loaded Ghostbusters D64 file and wrote it back to the floppy. I watched as the drive hummed and clicked and the screen showed the blocks being written. I then put it back in the 1571 and tried to load it with no luck. A check of the directory showed an empty formatted disk. Perhaps it’s just this ancient 5.25” drive. I can still write images to disk using the MMC Replay and the real 5.25”, but this problem is a mystery to me.

Try again. I've found every now and then it will act like it wrote the disk, but didn't. Do it a second time and it should.

[redrumloa]

@alexh

It's been a while since I wrote an Amiga 880k disk, but I've done 170k 5.25 floppy fairly recently. Writing a 170k D64 back to a real floppy takes about ~5 seconds. I've never timed it, but the speed is crazy fast.

[Darrin]

alexh wrote:
Nice review. One question. How long does it take to write an 880Kbyte disk? Is it roughly 1/2 the time it takes to write an ADF using an Amiga?

Time to grab the stopwatch:

Write Defender of the Crown disk 1 ADF to floppy (with verify):
2min 23sec (includes 1 x "retry")

Write Defender of the Crown disk 1 ADF to floppy (no verify):
1min 11sec

Thanks for the other info.  I wish I had another 5.25" PC drive to substitue for testing.  :-(

[Darrin]

redrumloa wrote:
Try again. I've found every now and then it will act like it wrote the disk, but didn't. Do it a second time and it should.

Cheers.  I've tried it several times with different floppies with no luck.  I'm not giving up though.  :-)

[Darrin]

redrumloa wrote:
@alexh

It's been a while since I wrote an Amiga 880k disk, but I've done 170k 5.25 floppy fairly recently. Writing a 170k D64 back to a real floppy takes about ~5 seconds. I've never timed it, but the speed is crazy fast.

Yeah, it whizzes through the CMB64 5.25" disks, but so does the MMC64 when you tell it to format on a "real" 1571.

[redrumloa]

Cheers. I've tried it several times with different floppies with no luck. I'm not giving up though.

But did you try it twice in a row on the same floppy?

[Darrin]

Oh yes.

In fact, I just used the MMC replay to format a disk, write "Ghostbusters" to it and then load "Ghostbusters" on my C128 (in C64 mode).

I then put the floppy in the PC and used the Catweasel to write "Red Storm Rising" disk 1 to it, checked it on the C128 and it was still "Ghostbusters", put the disk back in the PC, wrote the image again, checked it again (still Ghostbusters), tried again (still Ghostbusters).  I'm trying again having adjusted the 5.25" drive settings in Imagetool, but now I'm seeing a hell of a lot of red blocks after 413 seconds and 4 retries.  It's still going so let's see what happens...

[redrumloa]

Try another floppy drive :-(

[Darrin]

redrumloa wrote:
Try another floppy drive :-(

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.  The 486 PC it came from was given to me and I've never had it running.  I finally aborted the writing of the image as every time it "retried" it came up with different bad blocks.  When I put the disk in the 1571 ir comes up as "Drive Not Ready".  I've tried formatting it on the PC and even though it says OK, it doesn't read on the 1571.

For all I know, this old Teac PC drive may make an old PET 5.25" drive look state-of-the-art.

[Daniele]

Hello,

nice to hear another Catweasel and MMC user.
I bought the Catweasel PC on 2006 and it never made any working floppy for my Amigas. I always had "not reading disks" or "checksum error" when I writed the .adf to the floppy.
But it happens that now I am reading that with the newer version of the image tool the floppies works fine.
So when I have the time I would  put the Catweisel again in my PC XP .

I never tried to write .D64 on 5,25 floppies and I am sorry to not be able to help you. Anyway consider to contact me for any RR Replay or MMC64 issues or program.
I own both the cardtriges.

I wanna try the SID chip too on my catweisel but don't know if VICE could make the SID of the CAT work.

Cheers and good luck with the .D64 !!!

[redrumloa]

@Darrin

Not all drives will work with the Catweasel. Last time I tried it took me until the 3rd drive to find one that was compatible.

If you google hard enough you may find a 5.25 drive compatability list, there's one out there somewhere in cyberspace.

[Darrin]

Daniele wrote:
Hello,

nice to hear another Catweasel and MMC user.
I bought the Catweasel PC on 2006 and it never made any working floppy for my Amigas. I always had "not reading disks" or "checksum error" when I writed the .adf to the floppy.
But it happens that now I am reading that with the newer version of the image tool the floppies works fine.
So when I have the time I would  put the Catweisel again in my PC XP .

I haven't tried making an Amiga floppy with the older version.  I'll give it a go later.  :-)

I never tried to write .D64 on 5,25 floppies and I am sorry to not be able to help you. Anyway consider to contact me for any RR Replay or MMC64 issues or program.
I own both the cardtriges.

I wanna try the SID chip too on my catweisel but don't know if VICE could make the SID of the CAT work.

Thanks.  I may need to bug you at some point on the MMC Replay.

I've got a couple of spare C128s that don't work correctly so their SID chips are going into my Commodore-One board when it arrives.

Cheers and good luck with the .D64 !!!

Thanks.  I'm convinced it is the drive at this point.  I had it format a MSDOS disk and then it wouldn't read that back correctly even though it verified the format of the disk beforehand.

[Darrin]