New Catweasel mk IV drivers & disk formats!

stainy · 16 July 2008, 21:25

Drivers are here

new drivers for Catweasel MK4
The new drivers V 2.5.0.0 for Windows 2000 and Windows XP (32-bit versions) are fixing a few bugs in handling 5,25 inch drives. The new imagetool V3.1 can now read and write three new formats:

* VersaDOS HD
these disks have been provided by Perfint tech from India. They are used to store medical imaging data. With new, faster computers now being able to retrieve data from older medical equipment, lots of money can be saved, and up-to-date medical service with modern image processing algorithms can be provided at lower cost. We're especially happy about this use case, as it has extremely high value to threshold countries.

* VersaDOS 3HDDI
these disks have been provided to us by Matisa from Switzerland, a company that makes machines for railroad track construction and maintenance. The disk was mangled and obviously written on a very bad drive, but we managed to retrieve enough data for implementing this new format.

* HP4145
this disk was provided to us by Bosch (Hildesheim, Germany), where it is used in semiconductor test-equipment.

Another new feature of the imagetool is the possibility to save d64/d71/d81 images of Commodore disks with additional error information. The automatic recognition of disk formats now gives a list of possible formats instead of stopping at the first positive try, which makes the function a lot more useful. You can find more details in the readme-files of the archive:

New Catweasel MK4 controllers will be back in stock in august of this year. To bridge this bottleneck in supply, we have cleared our safety-stock of Catweasel MK4 controllers. To our knowledge, all pre-orders are served now. Our retail partners are taking orders that will be shipped as soon as the new production run is available.

individual Computers Jens Schönfeld GmbH
Im Zemmer 6
52152 Woffelsbach
Germany
www.icomp.de

musashi5150 · 16 July 2008, 21:52

Nice one stainy, thanks for letting us know

I've just installed them without any side effects so far.

stainy · 16 July 2008, 22:05

Lucky you !! They blue screen on me.. just like the previous drivers

when it installs the catwea2k.sys driver IRQL_NOT_LESS_EQUAL or something...

Few driver versions ago mine stopped working ( ie not booting with the card in ) guess something I installed is interfering with it.. I`ll have to go with a re-install to see if that fixes it!

stainy · 20 July 2008, 11:07

Re-install of Xp didn`t fix it...I can get the card installed and working.. but when I reboot my machine never restarts.. it just reboots over and over about 10 seconds into a boot

Currently looking at verifier.exe but not sure what I`m looking for

musashi5150 · 20 July 2008, 14:51

That's a shame my friend

Perhaps it's just not compatible with your mobo or another piece of hardware you've got in there... it's hardly surprising - it doesn't seem like it's been well engineered or supported.

stainy · 20 July 2008, 15:52

Yeah I know.. this is my 2nd CW as well.. I sold the 1st one because I couldn`t get it writing images ( because the floppy image program was wank ) I thought I`d give them another go.. it worked for a while.. then al lof a sudden one day I switched my pc on and my troubles started

alexh · 20 July 2008, 16:11

CW IV support still sucks. Jen's was supposed to be creating a card with a flexible - reconfigurable core so that it could be improved for compatibility.

It was supposed to be offering compatibility at the level which it could be integrated into emulators for direct disk access.

It was supposed to be able to image copy protected disks for CAPS/SoftPres purposes.

Love, Jens. His work is great. But when will he ever deliver a finished product?

stainy · 20 July 2008, 18:09

He seems to be too worried about adding these crazy drive options... all these weird hdd formats... surely you`d think he`d get the thing right with the compatibility before invading the hdd formats!

boing_1000 · 20 July 2008, 18:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexh

CW IV support still sucks. Jen's was supposed to be creating a card with a flexible - reconfigurable core so that it could be improved for compatibility.

It was supposed to be offering compatibility at the level which it could be integrated into emulators for direct disk access.

It was supposed to be able to image copy protected disks for CAPS/SoftPres purposes.

Love, Jens. His work is great. But when will he ever deliver a finished product?

And it is for those exact reasons that I sold mine. I got fed up and decided to just maintain my 1000 and use WinUAE as is.

alexh · 20 July 2008, 19:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by stainy

He seems to be too worried about adding these crazy drive options... all these weird hdd formats... surely you`d think he`d get the thing right with the compatibility before invading the hdd formats!

You're joking right??

He was PAID to do this by companies wanting these formats!

These were contracts which resulted in him and his team developing new software which (credit where credit is due) resulted in a new Amiga release.

vk4akp · 12 August 2008, 18:19

Hi guys! I've been dieing to get my hands on a Catweasel MK4 now for ages.

Can't wait till the new batch comes out (Early Sept 08 now I hear).

I have thousands of Amiga and C64 disks here that I desperately need to archive b4 they no longer read.

Any advice on 5.25" drive mechanism's? Can one still buy a brand new one that best suits the catweasel?

Thank you so much Individual Computers for making the catweasel!.

Please also consider doing a adapter for A500 / A1000 to offer hard drive and network interfacing. There are so many A500's still around that are useless without a cheap hard drive interface.

These seem to be the big issues in reviving the old retro gear.

- Mass Storage
- Networking
- And Ram (But less so). More the other two.
.-.-.

jabsy · 13 August 2008, 03:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by vk4akp

Hi guys! I've been dieing to get my hands on a Catweasel MK4 now for ages.

Can't wait till the new batch comes out (Early Sept 08 now I hear).

I picked a couple up from Amigakit in june/july, maybe he still has one??? I grabbed the second one as a spare, as I had other plans at the time (was hoping to use it as PS/2 ports on a USB-only PC) so if you dont get one by sept drop me a line.

Still to hook up a 5.25 to it as I'm still to find a 5.25 drive... Used to have tons of them... I just want it to write back C64 images to disk. Most of my 64 disks were ruined by Darwins ruthless humidity.

vk4akp · 13 August 2008, 07:35

HI, OK yea thanks for the offer on the catweasel.

But I think I'm going to hold out for a brand new'ie in September.

If you want PM me your price though just for the fun of it. If it's cheap enough you never know you might twist my arm.

Apparently the current stock they are selling are `safety' stock, which means they have been re-worked most likely by hand and some IC's changed.

So personally I'd like a nice new factory soldered one for cosmetic's.

Also the next batch can't be made into a `low profile card'. I'm not really sure what this means. Perhaps the extra smaller backplane bracket isn't included? Who knows. If so I'm sure this could be procured at a later date. But if the actual card it's self is higher / larger I might be re-thinking the whole thing myself again.

With PC's traditionally getting smaller and smaller this is most likely a bad choice if they have changed the actual card size.

But will wait and see, hopefully there will be pictures and a better explanation on what the new stock is.

As for your 5.25". For some strange reason many years ago when I was stripping down PC's I think I saved a few 5.25" drives. I will have to go down to the shed and see what condition they are in. And in future I will be sure to keep any more I come across. They were sealed in a cupboard so should be ok, assuming they worked in the first place.

One thing I did do which I still have nightmares over is that I trashed a pair of perfectly preserved 8" drives some years ago when I was forced to down size. I still have the parts sitting in a bucket but can't find the alloy frames. I have since found it impossible to get 8" drives at a reasonable price. I so hate myself for this. But unfortunately I have run out of room and as time goes on I might find myself in the same situation again with other equipment as I don't own my own home.

I spent last night watching all the old Amiga promo tapes on YouTube. Them really were the days!. Brought a tear to my eye. Second they invent a time machine again I'm going back to work for Commodore. Who know's maybe I could change the future to one where IBM & Microsoft fold and CBM rule the computer world!.

.-.-.

jabsy · 13 August 2008, 08:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by vk4akp

HI, OK yea thanks for the offer on the catweasel.

But I think I'm going to hold out for a brand new'ie in September.

If you want PM me your price though just for the fun of it. If it's cheap enough you never know you might twist my arm.

Apparently the current stock they are seller are `safety' stock, which means they have been re-worked most likely by hand and some IC's changed.

So personally I'd like a nice new factory soldered one for cosmetic's.

Also the next batch can't be made into a `low profile card'. I'm not really sure what this means. Perhaps the extra smaller backplane bracket isn't included? Who knows. If so I'm sure this could be procured at a later date. But if the actual card it's self is higher / larger I might be re-thinking the whole thing myself again.

With PC's traditionally getting smaller and smaller this is most likely a bad choice if they have changed the actual card size.

But will wait and see, hopefully there will be pictures and a better explanation on what the new stock is.

My card is brand new, sealed in box, if I pm'd a price it'd be what I paid for it.... You can maybe see the price on the AK website. I'm not desperate to sell it... Funnily enough I bid for one on ebay that ended up going for more than $US200, one of the other regulars put it up. Once I missed it I took a look on amigakit and he had new stock cheaper than the used card on ebay.

The card I opened and installed didn't have the lower profile backplane, and the card was brand new, no evidence of reworking. Perhaps I grabbed it before the "safety-stock" release???

vk4akp · 14 August 2008, 17:20

OK, NP. Yea won't be paying no US$200 + freight for a catweasel!. GreedieBay is an amazing place. Where else can you pay more for less!

I did see that auction, the seller will be laughing all the way to the bank.

OK, some more news. The new cards are Black, not red. And have some more bug fixes and improvements.

Last I heard was Mid September now. Seems to keep getting pushed off further and further.

So I think I will wait for the Aus$ to peak again and place an order on a new one @ US$124.

.-.-.

16 July 2008, 21:25	#1
stainy Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Concord, NC, USA Age: 52 Posts: 1,712	New Catweasel mk IV drivers & disk formats! Drivers are here new drivers for Catweasel MK4 The new drivers V 2.5.0.0 for Windows 2000 and Windows XP (32-bit versions) are fixing a few bugs in handling 5,25 inch drives. The new imagetool V3.1 can now read and write three new formats: * VersaDOS HD these disks have been provided by Perfint tech from India. They are used to store medical imaging data. With new, faster computers now being able to retrieve data from older medical equipment, lots of money can be saved, and up-to-date medical service with modern image processing algorithms can be provided at lower cost. We're especially happy about this use case, as it has extremely high value to threshold countries. * VersaDOS 3HDDI these disks have been provided to us by Matisa from Switzerland, a company that makes machines for railroad track construction and maintenance. The disk was mangled and obviously written on a very bad drive, but we managed to retrieve enough data for implementing this new format. * HP4145 this disk was provided to us by Bosch (Hildesheim, Germany), where it is used in semiconductor test-equipment. Another new feature of the imagetool is the possibility to save d64/d71/d81 images of Commodore disks with additional error information. The automatic recognition of disk formats now gives a list of possible formats instead of stopping at the first positive try, which makes the function a lot more useful. You can find more details in the readme-files of the archive: New Catweasel MK4 controllers will be back in stock in august of this year. To bridge this bottleneck in supply, we have cleared our safety-stock of Catweasel MK4 controllers. To our knowledge, all pre-orders are served now. Our retail partners are taking orders that will be shipped as soon as the new production run is available. individual Computers Jens Schönfeld GmbH Im Zemmer 6 52152 Woffelsbach Germany www.icomp.de

12 August 2008, 18:19	#11
vk4akp Registered User Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Ipswich / Queensland / Australia Posts: 56	CatWeasel MK4 Rocks!! I want one! Hi guys! I've been dieing to get my hands on a Catweasel MK4 now for ages. Can't wait till the new batch comes out (Early Sept 08 now I hear). I have thousands of Amiga and C64 disks here that I desperately need to archive b4 they no longer read. Any advice on 5.25" drive mechanism's? Can one still buy a brand new one that best suits the catweasel? Thank you so much Individual Computers for making the catweasel!. Please also consider doing a adapter for A500 / A1000 to offer hard drive and network interfacing. There are so many A500's still around that are useless without a cheap hard drive interface. These seem to be the big issues in reviving the old retro gear. - Mass Storage - Networking - And Ram (But less so). More the other two. .-.-.

13 August 2008, 07:35	#13
vk4akp Registered User Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Ipswich / Queensland / Australia Posts: 56	HI, OK yea thanks for the offer on the catweasel. But I think I'm going to hold out for a brand new'ie in September. If you want PM me your price though just for the fun of it. If it's cheap enough you never know you might twist my arm. Apparently the current stock they are selling are `safety' stock, which means they have been re-worked most likely by hand and some IC's changed. So personally I'd like a nice new factory soldered one for cosmetic's. Also the next batch can't be made into a `low profile card'. I'm not really sure what this means. Perhaps the extra smaller backplane bracket isn't included? Who knows. If so I'm sure this could be procured at a later date. But if the actual card it's self is higher / larger I might be re-thinking the whole thing myself again. With PC's traditionally getting smaller and smaller this is most likely a bad choice if they have changed the actual card size. But will wait and see, hopefully there will be pictures and a better explanation on what the new stock is. As for your 5.25". For some strange reason many years ago when I was stripping down PC's I think I saved a few 5.25" drives. I will have to go down to the shed and see what condition they are in. And in future I will be sure to keep any more I come across. They were sealed in a cupboard so should be ok, assuming they worked in the first place. One thing I did do which I still have nightmares over is that I trashed a pair of perfectly preserved 8" drives some years ago when I was forced to down size. I still have the parts sitting in a bucket but can't find the alloy frames. I have since found it impossible to get 8" drives at a reasonable price. I so hate myself for this. But unfortunately I have run out of room and as time goes on I might find myself in the same situation again with other equipment as I don't own my own home. I spent last night watching all the old Amiga promo tapes on YouTube. Them really were the days!. Brought a tear to my eye. Second they invent a time machine again I'm going back to work for Commodore. Who know's maybe I could change the future to one where IBM & Microsoft fold and CBM rule the computer world!. .-.-. Last edited by vk4akp; 14 August 2008 at 17:17.

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16 July 2008, 21:52	#2
musashi5150 move.w #$4489,$dff07e Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Norfolk, UK Age: 42 Posts: 2,351	Nice one stainy, thanks for letting us know I've just installed them without any side effects so far.

16 July 2008, 22:05	#3
stainy Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Concord, NC, USA Age: 52 Posts: 1,712	Lucky you !! They blue screen on me.. just like the previous drivers when it installs the catwea2k.sys driver IRQL_NOT_LESS_EQUAL or something... Few driver versions ago mine stopped working ( ie not booting with the card in ) guess something I installed is interfering with it.. I`ll have to go with a re-install to see if that fixes it!

20 July 2008, 11:07	#4
stainy Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Concord, NC, USA Age: 52 Posts: 1,712	Re-install of Xp didn`t fix it...I can get the card installed and working.. but when I reboot my machine never restarts.. it just reboots over and over about 10 seconds into a boot Currently looking at verifier.exe but not sure what I`m looking for

20 July 2008, 14:51	#5
musashi5150 move.w #$4489,$dff07e Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Norfolk, UK Age: 42 Posts: 2,351	That's a shame my friend Perhaps it's just not compatible with your mobo or another piece of hardware you've got in there... it's hardly surprising - it doesn't seem like it's been well engineered or supported.

20 July 2008, 15:52	#6
stainy Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Concord, NC, USA Age: 52 Posts: 1,712	Yeah I know.. this is my 2nd CW as well.. I sold the 1st one because I couldn`t get it writing images ( because the floppy image program was wank ) I thought I`d give them another go.. it worked for a while.. then al lof a sudden one day I switched my pc on and my troubles started

20 July 2008, 16:11	#7
alexh Thalion Webshrine Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Oxford Posts: 14,337	CW IV support still sucks. Jen's was supposed to be creating a card with a flexible - reconfigurable core so that it could be improved for compatibility. It was supposed to be offering compatibility at the level which it could be integrated into emulators for direct disk access. It was supposed to be able to image copy protected disks for CAPS/SoftPres purposes. Love, Jens. His work is great. But when will he ever deliver a finished product?

20 July 2008, 18:09	#8
stainy Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Concord, NC, USA Age: 52 Posts: 1,712	He seems to be too worried about adding these crazy drive options... all these weird hdd formats... surely you`d think he`d get the thing right with the compatibility before invading the hdd formats!

14 August 2008, 17:20	#15
vk4akp Registered User Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Ipswich / Queensland / Australia Posts: 56	OK, NP. Yea won't be paying no US$200 + freight for a catweasel!. GreedieBay is an amazing place. Where else can you pay more for less! I did see that auction, the seller will be laughing all the way to the bank. OK, some more news. The new cards are Black, not red. And have some more bug fixes and improvements. Last I heard was Mid September now. Seems to keep getting pushed off further and further. So I think I will wait for the Aus$ to peak again and place an order on a new one @ US$124. .-.-.

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