CATWEASEL MK4 PLUS

@Spirantho

my 6581 is on it's way over the pond as we speak!..you should hopefully receive it within the next 8 to 10 days

hmmm

this isn't a bad thing I suppose

I'm thinking though because I'm going to get hold of the SPS Floppy drive that allows reading and writing of IPFs that it'll also do ordinary floppy filesystems... so better to wait for that to be released and of course its usb so no need to take up a slot...

It probably won't do High Density though and that's a small pain

Excuse my mumbling!

An old topic I know, but thought it best to add to this rather than open a new topic.

Does anyone know if the joystick ports on the Catweasel MK4 work under OS4?

Thinking of buying one after watching clusteruk's videos (links below) and being able to use the mouse/joystick ports would swing it for me. Understand you can read floppy disks with the driver on OS4depot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIcrIjPOctc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaitHeL6bEA

@Daniel

I don't think the OS4 guys have written a mouse driver yet, though it's definitely possible as I implemented the keyboard and mouse handler in Janus-UAE (for AROS).

The joystick would need AmigaInput support, the mouse I'm not sure about. It wouldn't be massively difficult to implement, but would need an understanding of the mouse control system that I don't have at the moment. Happy to help anyone who wants to try though.

Bad news I'm afraid...

... the SID chip that 328gts sent me is a bit kaput. Don't know if it was when it left Canada but it got a little crushed in the post, which probably didn't help.

I threw lots of Vice code at it and it didn't make any noise. I forced it to use the Catweasel SID engine (the GUI doesn't work for the SID), and then I threw lots more code at it and it still made no noise, even though the registers were being written. I changed the startup code to be more Mk4 specific. Still nothing. Added the firmware loader - still nothing.
I then put the 6581 into my C64 (which I didn't want to do .. but curiosity kills cats!) and not only did it not work (a low buzzing in the TV speaker) but it got very hot very quickly, and my C64 started showing wrong colours. I think it's draining too much power - the machine continued working, but erratically.

Time to try my 6581 in the CW... still nothing. This 6581 works, though.

Then a thought occurs - what if SID1 socket isn't what it expects... swap the SID into SID2... Sound!

Change the code to use the other SID and lo and behold SID1 socket works.

So, I'm afraid that SID chip made the ultimate sacrifice (and a lesson in packaging has been learned! :) ) but on the plus side I now know how to make it work. So, here (http://www.retroreview.com/iang/C64_CWSID.lha) is a preliminary version of x64 - run it from your Vice-2.2 directory as installed from OS4depot, and make sure your SID is in SID2 (that's the one away from the back of the machine). Note it's called x64, not x64.exe like the os4depot version is for some reason.

Try it, connect up the speaker, and let me know what happens!

@328gts:

You're more than welcome to the SID chip back, of course (yes, it's the same one, I didn't switch them! :) ), maybe you'll have more luck than I with it, but for me it just doesn't play ball I'm afraid. If you're interested I took photos of the chip as it reached me.

@Spirantho

damn I've had that 6581 since 1983 from my original 64
ah well of course my fault for not taking the time to package it properly and assuming the sponge backing and anti static bag would be enough..doh ..hey very little sleep and a 2 and 5 year old will do that to you ya know

anyhow glad it was of some help at least & now to dig up a replacement I go when I have some spare time...thanks for the help Ian and for trying to save my SID

@328gts

No problem, I wish I had better news.
It's possible that it's just a dodgy connection but I don't think it is (the pins are quite weak on one end now). You may have more luck if you have it back... I may spend a little more time on it but I wouldn't give much for its chances, I'm afraid. I was actually quite worried it had taken out my Catweasel too, but luckily that's fine.
I guess it's not too surprising it's dead - the pins had gone through the static bag so it may as well have had no static bag at all.

Still, you live and learn, I guess. Just wish it had been on a cheap chip. Suggest you get yourself a very cheap C64 and whip the SID from that for your one!

@Spirantho

no worries I trust you mate and sorry about the hassle....thank God it didn't hurt your hardware else I'd be looking to buy more than just a SID

OK, here's some good news for 328gts.

His SID is not completely dead. I don't think it's usable but it does do something. In fact, it plays sounds just fine, for the most part, except a) It never releases the note completely, and b) it plays reeeeeallly soft (which is why I thought it was doing nothing).

I don't know if anybody knows anything about why this may have happened but there we go. It makes Thing Bounces Back sound very strange. :) It does, however, mean that I'm able to test the stereo portion of the Catweasel!

@Spirantho

hey good news indeed ..the old girl still has some kick in her eh

so any news on the stereo SIDS in the Catweasel?? wonder if I can get some SID tracks into my Audio Evolution tunes via my CatWeasel now???

@328gts

I really need another SID....

Problem is a) I don't want to open my C64C (incredibly, the warranty seal is still in tact!) and b) there's a boxed C64C in the shop down the road, and he wants ?20 for it - but I don't have ?20!

If I can somehow scrape ?20 together maybe I can get that C64 and 'borrow' the SID from it. In the meantime, I need to work on the mono version!

@ All

anyone else have a spare SID they can send off to Ian?? or we can send off some cash to him to buy that 64 close by his place??

I'm in for sending him a few bucks if no SID can be sent to him..anyone else interested than post it here so we can tally up the funds

@328gts

:) Thanks for the offer but I don't think many people actually have Catweasels or are interested enough. I certainly never saw that much interest in the disk part of the CW.

I went to the shop yesterday and tried to trade in an Atari VCS (6-switcher) and 18 games for it but he could only offer me ?13 for the lot so I've stuck the games on eBay. So far 4 have sold for ?9+postage, so I'm halfway there! ;)

In the meantime I'll try and get access to the Vice source repository so we can do another official build. I now have the GUI correctly working so it starts using the sound card but you can select the Catweasel or sound card as you like from the GUI. I need to add a "Swap SIDs" button on a CW MkIV tab though, for people with a SID in SID1 (the one by the bracket) only.

Edit: I'm thinking of making a video of the SID/CW combo in action. Would you like me to video any software in particular?

@Spirantho

great work & thanks again !..check your pm..I'll gladly send you the remaining ?9

btw, anything from Hubbard is fine for me

just to let you know, i never bought a catweasel for my amiga due the bad shape of the drivers. chicken and egg situation eh? and i had no belief in that there would ever be drivers, but this is really cool!
what's missing is a plugin for tunenet that makes use of the sids on the catweasel, when that is done i'll really consider shelving out for a catweasel and locating two working sids.. in two broken c64's. :D
i'm hoping for a joystick driver too... btw.

keep rocking guys!

@spotUP

ya a TuneNet would be awesome and hey how about being able to use those 2 beautiful SIDS in a music program like Audio Evolution or a tracker program

OK, another little update:

I've emailed the Vice team to ask how I can go about submitting my changes but in the mean time I can always do my own builds with Catweasel support, so watch this space. :)

As soon as I can get another SID chip I should have stereo SID support, reckon... but I can't guarantee it.

I found a bug in Vice's AHI handling that doesn't clear the buffer correctly when you change away from AHI so you get leftovers in the sound. Need to fix that.

Once I've fixed that, I can make a video. But in the meantime, I tried running Thing Bounces Back on a real C64C (I think an 8580 but the warranty seal is in-tact :) ). I also ran using FastSID under Vice, and the Catweasel.

Have to say.. the FastSID sounded wrong in several places. Rasping noises where there shouldn't be, wrong effects.... played the CW version and it sounded great. Played the C64 and it sounded nearly identical.
So so far, it's looking good for the Catweasel!

@SpotUp:

(By the way, always nice to see your ports, fine work there :) )

The disk support is pretty good these days, even down to the GUI-based imaging program. I wrote the afore-mentioned Thing Bounces Back disk using the CW, of course. :) I'm always looking for new formats to support though. Should have Amstrad CPC 3" support in this week. Wish I could find a cheap 1571 and 1581 though. Copy protected 1541 would be cool too, but 95% of the images on line are cracked anyway.

For TuneNet... well, I don't know much about TuneNet. And I don't know much about the SID file format. So I wouldn't hold your breath. However, I do understand how to use the SID on the CW, and I do know how the SID file format works (it emulates a 6502, I believe!) and I know that there's open source SID players out there, so I could rip the emulation of the 6502 out of that and interface the SID emulation itself straight to the real SID chip. This may, indeed, rock. Hard. :)

As for the joystick driver, I need to know how to write an AmigaInput driver. I'd be quite willing to write one though if anyone knows who I should contact.... (But no promises of course!)

If you're thinking of buying a CW Mk4+, I can honestly say the hardware is well worth it, especially if you're into 8-bit machines too, as the ability to read and especially write disks for weird formats is invaluable. As for the SID support, well it's too early to say yet, but so far it's been top notch.

Edit: Oh look! GoatTracker uses SDL. Might be able to get something here! (It's even been ported to MorphOS already!)

Edit2: There's even a TuneNet plugin already, which uses reSid. All I need to do is whip the resid code out.

I'm thinking, by the way, of making a catweaselsid.device, to make porting easier, as it'll be closer to the Linux and Windows handling. Not sure yet whether to do it Windows style (write addr,reg,addr,reg etc.) or Linux style (seek addr, write reg, seek addr, write reg etc.)...

@Spirantho

excellent stuff man! I'll say it again that this should be first page news stuff

btw, check your email

@328gts

Got your contribution, thanks :) That'll help a lot!

If anyone else wants to help with my Catweasel stuff my PayPal address is in my .sig by the way (hey, you can't blame me for trying :) )

@Spirantho

nah thank you ! btw, I spread the word over at other sites so hopefully we can get a few bucks your way