Feedback requested from present and potential Catweasel owners.

[redrumloa]

Do you own a Catweasel? Have you considered buying one? If so I'd like to hear from you. What features would you like to see implemented into the Catweasel?

This is a serious request for feedback, please answer to this thread.

[Erwin-K]

I have two Catweasel II zorro boards on my systems at work. One is in a rev. 4.2 A2000. The other in an A4000T.

Got these for the HD floppy support. When the A2000's GVP-M 060 card acts up, (Not very often.) I stick a spare IDE drive on the Catweasel. Booting from there I can usually fix the problems easily, or even run the Video Toaster if I have to.

Two or three years ago I had some issues with one of the boards. I e-mailed Jens. In less than 24 hours he replied with several suggestions. It turned out to be a minor connection deal. Problem solved.

I've been happy enough with these boards that I bought some of Jens products for my home system.

[KennyR]

Better software support, that's all I would ask. The CW already supports anything I can think of relating to backwards compatibility with Amigas. And there's no point in adding new features if, as is usually the case, they get partial or even no software support.

[Steady]

I'm planning to get one of the Mark III Catweasles to put in a PC so I can read/write various disks (espescially Amiga). Just need money first...

Hardware wise, it's fine. I just want as writable drivers for as many formats as possible, within reason.

[bloodline]

redrumloa wrote:
Do you own a Catweasel? Have you considered buying one? If so I'd like to hear from you. What features would you like to see implemented into the Catweasel?

This is a serious request for feedback, please answer to this thread.

What I would like is an external (internal?) floppy drive that plugs into the USB, and has an integrated catweasel. So that I can read and write Amiga DD and HD disk as normal disks. Must be USB.

[weirdami]

I've been thinking of getting a catweasel. I don't know when I will, though. All I'm really interested in is using it to get all my old Amiga and C=64 disks backed up to CD. I think it already reads those two disks, though. I'd suggest that it come with some kind of diskdalv functionality, if it doesn't already, so I don't have to worry about doing that to 100's of disks.

[sdesros]

I've got a MkIII in my Pegasos.  I use it mainly to read Amiga disks, and sometimes PC disks.  

I wouldn't mind it being more Pegasos friendly (native ppc binaries, more testing and tweaking so that mounting on startup always works, fully working installation.)

On top of that, I wouldn't mind getting a lowlevel.library that would allow me to use all of the buttons of a CD32 pad connected to the ports on the back of the card.

[Crumb]

As you will remember there was a catweasel mk2 model which was connected to IDE. I'd like something like that for AmigaOne/Pegasos/x86...

That way I would be able to put easily an A1 mini-itx in an A500 case. The keyboard could be connected with a PIC...

Oh yes... an amiga to pc ps2 adapter that allowed you to use a ps2 keyboard directly on windows, amithlon, morphos or os4 would be great...

I don't want to use a pci slot...

Releasing an usb disk drive like Bloodline suggests would be a good idea.

An USB Amiga keyboard would rock too, but I would survive converting an A500 keyboard to ps2 using a pic...

[ShadesOfGrey]

I have a Catweasel ZII S-Class and loved it (until my Amiga 4000 died :-().  I was especially impressed with Jens' support.  He was always quick to respond and 95% of the time had the solution to your problem!

I would like to see the software improve a bit, in particular the install routine.  As I recall it was a bit confusing.  Plus, unlike a standard install script (that you can view and see where things get put) you have to hunt around to find where files got installed.

As for the hardware, there isn't much to improve.  About the only thing you could do is ingetgrate products...  In the case of the ZII, I would like to see the KickFlash integrated and the Kylwalda bundled or integrated.  Don't have a MK3 yet, but I inted to get one (or two) once the software is a bit more mature.  But if I did have one, I guess I'd like to see a KickFlash like feature (i.e. boot from high speed flash RAM) and maybe an integrated SATA capable Buddha :crazy:.

[Homer]

Hmm, I bought an early Catweasel for my A1200 tower to give me some extra drives, but never got it to work :-(
Its been a few years since I took the old tower to pieces, but I seem to remember it needed the clock port, and my mobo didn't have the headers, so I soldered my own in. Unfortunately I could not get it to work at all :-(
Ended up with an LS-120 instead on the 4 way IDE adapter which could do both HD/DD and 120Mb discs.
Maybe I still have the Catweasel - anyone interested ? May not be complete but could be useful to someone ! (As long as I didn't fry it with my home made header).

[Ilwrath]

I agree -- Driver support is the biggest thing lacking in the Catweasel MK3.  

Another thing I'd like to have on a future version is better noise reduction on the SID sound output -- especially when the SID isn't in use.  I get lots of background buzz on mine.  Enough that I mute the input that I have the card leading to, when I'm not using it.  I like the SID sound.  I just don't want my computer to sound like a beat-up C64c (background buzz, pops, clicks) all the time!  ;-)

A USB version would be cool, though, as well.  :-)

[Fats]

I have an MKIII in my A1. First of all I would like a working floppy driver for the PPC linux kernel. I could not get it compiled.
Secondly I would like a C64 style serial disk output connector so that I could use my A1 as the harddrive for my C128.

[bloodline]

If a USB floppy drive version of the catweazel was made, it should just plug in and be useable on a PC without drivers! i.e. it should be treated as a normal USB storage device.

[Paul]

This is a serious request for feedback, please answer to this thread.

Red,

Basically, all I care about is being able to read my Old Amiga disks on my A1. Although, with enough adaptors plugged on to the end, maybe I could use an A1000 keyboard with my A1, too!

Paul

[takemehomegrandma]

sdesros wrote:
I've got a MkIII in my Pegasos.  I use it mainly to read Amiga disks, and sometimes PC disks.  

I wouldn't mind it being more Pegasos friendly (native ppc binaries, more testing and tweaking so that mounting on startup always works, fully working installation.)

On top of that, I wouldn't mind getting a lowlevel.library that would allow me to use all of the buttons of a CD32 pad connected to the ports on the back of the card.

I agree. I have a MkIII Flipper that I will use in my Pegasos. Unfortunately, I have not got it to work yet because of incompatible floppy drives. Teac drives are recommended, and I will get one from GGS Data soon.

From what I hear, the software support is the *major* downside of the Catweasel MkIII. That, and the somewhat lacking Pegasos/MorphOS friendliness that I have heard of ...