CATWEASEL MK4 PLUS

Hi!

I've still an other problem.

I try to run a 5.25" disk drive an a 3,5" disk drive on MK4. Well, both drives are running, but I can`t read from the big one because of "reading errors".

I think thats a problem with the driver (spinning speed?).

Has anybody a solution for me?

Thanks

Wilfred

@Wilfred

The version you're running only supports 300rpm disk drives, not 360rpm like PC 1.2MB 5.25" drives use.

Are you trying to read/write PC or Amiga disks in the 5.25" drive? I've not put in support for Amiga 5.25" disks yet (won't take long, but I have a 3" drive connected at the moment instead of the 3.5" and 5.25" ones). If you want to test a version that I think works with PC 5.25" HC disks I can send it you, but it's still very much under development, so may go horribly wrong...

Edit: Actually, I may as well just put up the device as it stands. It's at:
www.retroreview.com/iang/CatweaselTest_V1_4.lha
Use it entirely at your own risk! Note it's called catweasel.device now not cw.device so you'll have to change your mountlist. I've included my work-in-progress imaging program too, make sure the flags field in your mountlist is correct for a 5.25" drive (15,17 or 18 for 320K, 1.2MB and 360KB respectively).
In case anyone tries this, don't be surprised if it doesn't work! As I say, I have my 3" drive connected at the moment so may have broken stuff.
If anyone does use it, though, I'd be grateful if they'd report to me in this thread or by email or PM. Thanks!

@Spirantho

Quote:

Hi,

Well, but that was not the case with real noclick, real Amigas. ;)
I rember it was said, you get no click OR auto recognition. But i had a non clicking drve and disc changes where recognized.
In the end the was a flag in OS3 to disable clicking, afaik.

CU,
Mario

@Spirantho

Thank you very much, I will try to read PC disks.

But my wish is to read AMIGA 880k floppys, that one, I had made with my old Amiga on extern 5,25" floppy drive.

The OS4depot reading tool doesn`t work (only red sectors), mounting the disk cause reading errors.

@padrino

Kind of, yes... but not really.
My understanding is that the no-click option didn't disable the click, it just changed it from seeking between two valid tracks to seeking to an invalid one (i.e. track -1). The drive would recognise this wasn't a good idea and not do it, but would still return the disk info. If you do this on some drives, though, you'll damage them, hence it not being wise, it just happened that Amiga disk drives could cope.

I may put in an option for this at some point, with the appropriate disclaimers, but not yet.

I'll try and get an Amiga 880K compatible catweasel.device for you all when I can, should be a five minute job. Luckily I have a 5.25" external Amiga drive myself!

@Spirantho

Quote:

Oh, that would be nice.
So I get rid of my problem and can join all of the good old stuff

@Wilfred

Hopefully. :)

Remember though your disks may have gone bad! Did you try the version above to see if that worked with other drivers?

Incidentally, why did you use a 5.25" drive on your Amiga? It's kind of non-standard.... :)

@Spirantho

Quote:

Well, I think that some disks are bad; I don`t use them for more than 10 years because I had no time and space for that.

And, of cause, in a "new" Amiga (UAE), AROS or SAM enviroment you should do other things than spending time with the old stuff.

Of cause, I had the important things of 3,5" floppys. And you know the sensitivity of floppydisks, too. Now I want to safe the other things.

Quote:

Well, first of all I safe money. In the middle/end of the eightys one 3,5" disk costs roundabout DM 9,00 (EUR 4,50), one "floppy" only a few cents.

The other reason was, that I ran a PC-Emulator on my Amiga and it was important for me, to carry data from each system to the other. And 5,25" was the standard of PC-Disk-Drives, I think till the end of the 8086 age.

The big fdd operated great in each format on Amiga 500, given that you have enough power (a better power supply or an other supply via Harddiskdrive A 590 for example).

@Spirantho

I'm planning on buying a Sam soon, and Catweasel support for Amiga floppies would be fantastic. If it can also write Speccy +3 disks, then I'd be overjoyed!

@gleng

Quote:

That's the plan. :) Amiga floppies work fine, already.

Last night I successfully read an Einstein disk (also 3") for the first time, should be able to get Spectrum +3 support pretty soon but I don't have a +3 (I have every other kind of Speccy, but no +3!). Looking at a +3 disk image of Lords of Chaos, it's the same format but with the sector starting at 1 instead of 0 (or 0xC1 as the CPC seems to), so it should be easy to do. Maybe you can help me test it?

If you want to read/write Spectrum disks, though, you'll need:
* A 3" disk drive. Any will do, I'm using an EME-231 from a PCW - it cost me ?15+postage. You can also get them from DataServe Retro.
* A power adaptor - a standard MOLEX->floppy connector with the +5V and +12V swapped does just fine, only takes a minute.
* A 26 pin -> 34 pin cable. This is usually very tricky to get hold of, but luckily I have the stuff needed to make them so I can help if you need it.

@Spirantho

Cool! As soon as I get hold of a Sam + Catweasel, I'll let you know.

Got my CatWeasel Mark IV today and have it installed in my Sam along with a Teac 3.5 floppy drive (missing a bezel, but it's all I had on hand). Now wondering about the software side of things...

Is it as simple as installing catweasel.device into devs and creating a mountlist and then using the imager program to read and write? Is there a sample mountlist somewhere? For the moment I'm merely interested in reading and writing Amiga DSDD disks.


EDIT: Nevermind! Got it figured out. Here's the mountlist that worked for me...

Device = catweasel.device
Unit = 0
Flags = 0 /* format #0 = Amiga DD */
Surfaces = 2
BlocksPerTrack = 11
Reserved = 2
mask = 0x7ffffffc
MaxTransfer = 0x00200000
Interleave = 0
LowCyl = 0
HighCyl = 79
Buffers = 5
BufMemType = 1
StackSize = 4096
Priority = 5
GlobVec = -1
ACTIVATE = 1

@mbrantley

Yes, you'll only need the imaging proggy if you want to read/write images. If you want access through AmigaDOS you need to mount them with the correct filesystem, as you did.

How is it going, working ok for you?

Right, anyone who's interested can grab my latest catweasel.device from
http://www.retroreview.com/iang/Catweasel_V1_5.lha

As before, use it entirely at your own risk!
This version supports:
Tatung Einstein 200KB 3" reading
Amstrad PCW 8256 200KB 3" reading
Sinclair Spectrum +3 200KB 3" reading
Amiga 5.25" 880KB reading and writing.

Good luck, let me know how you get on!

Edit: To use the 5.25" Amiga driver, take your TD0: mountlist and edit the Flags field to 19!

@Spirantho

Ian, it's working very well. Thanks! I have successfully read, written and formatted Amiga DD and HD floppies. Right now I have TD0 mounted instead as DF0 (makes me feel all warm inside!). I'm leaving that mounted all the time and will only mount TH0 on the rare occasion when I might need it. Haven't tested the other formats yet.

Only weird thing has been that if I boot up the Sam with a floppy in the drive, the OS reports a read-write error. But the disk is fine if inserted after boot.

Now I need to track down a 3.5 inch floppy drive with a black bezel. The drive in there now is missing a bezel, and it spoils the looks of my pretty new Lian Li case.

And now I also am intrigued about finding a 5.25 inch drive to read and write Commodore 64 floppies. What should I look for? Can those be utilized with Vice?

@mbrantley

Glad it's working!

For the 5.25" drive, any PC 1.2MB drive will do (you may have trouble getting a black one though - most black ones are 360K and won't work yet as they're 300rpm). You can use the drive with d64 images, and can be read also using the filesystem 1541fs (I didn't have much luck writing - something I need to look into). Once you've imaged the disks you want to use, though, you can use them in Vice, but copy protected disks won't work yet either.

You can use the imager program to write D64 images back to disk, though, that's what I use it for!

@Spirantho

Made it home tonight with a black Sony 1.44MB drive and swapped out the faceless Teac. The Sony works fine. Yeah, it does look like finding a black 1.2MB 5.25" drive will not be easy, although they were made. Might have to go beige until I do find one.

So perhaps rather than messing with Vice I'll end up writing C64 floppies from downloaded disk images and use those in my actual Commodore 128, which is attached to 1541 and 1571 drives. For the heck of it, my Datasette is also connected to the 128. That's the piece of computer equipment I've kept the longest, having bought it at K mart in December 1983 when I was 18.

@mbrantley

You might be able to get a 360K drive (they're often black) and swap the facia with a 1.2MB drive...?

Personally, I'd go with the real C64/128 any day than Vice. It's the only way for the full experience! :)

@Spirantho
Does the software EasyADF work on OS4.1+CW? (ie:can i make an ADF of a game disk with that combo?)

@Spirantho