Getting my amiga disks onto my HD

[Narf the Mouse]

I have: One Catweasel Mk4 in probably-working condition (but it doesn't detect the floppy drives). WinUAE (of course). No known computer with a working IDE slot. Three floppy drives in probably-working condition. Floppy connectors which probably aren't broken. A reasonable knowledge of how to plug stuff in and what goes where. A Windows XP PC in good working order (CD drive and DVD drive, both SATA). An old Windows 98 PC which may or may not work and doesn't have a monitor, mouse or keyboard (but I can attach them). And a bunch of old Amiga floppies.

So - Help me get my old Amiga stuff onto the PC HD, please.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Narf the Mouse

I have: One Catweasel Mk4 in probably-working condition (but it doesn't detect the floppy drives). WinUAE (of course). No known computer with a working IDE slot. Three floppy drives in probably-working condition. Floppy connectors which probably aren't broken. A reasonable knowledge of how to plug stuff in and what goes where. A Windows XP PC in good working order (CD drive and DVD drive, both SATA). An old Windows 98 PC which may or may not work and doesn't have a monitor, mouse or keyboard (but I can attach them). And a bunch of old Amiga floppies.

So - Help me get my old Amiga stuff onto the PC HD, please.

Hi Narf the Mouse,

First, forget about the old Win98 PC. The Catweasel MkIV is designed to be used only with Windows 2000 or later.

Second, you will require some drivers for the Catweasel. They are available here:
http://siliconsonic.de/t/bin/
I recommend you get the latest CWMK42600.zip and imagetool_hotfix.zip files from that page.

Then, if you're still having trouble, try the latest beta drivers from here:
http://beta.icomp.de/

The Catweasel card is much more likely to work reliably if you give it a dedicated floppy drive instead of sharing a floppy drive with Windows.

Here is a manual for the Catweasel MkIV:
http://siliconsonic.de/t/catweasel-usermanual.pdf

That should get you started. Come back and ask more questions here if you need to.

[Narf the Mouse]

I'd previously installed the Catweasel; however, I don't believe I tried connecting just the cable between the Catweasel and the floppy drive.

I've done so; however, the floppy drive still isn't recognized. It seems no matter what I do, that problem remains. It's getting intensely frustrating.

I'll try uninstalling the drivers. Again.

Edit: Uninstalling the drivers didn't work. As for the floppy drive, it's just sitting there, empty, with the disk light on.

[Narf the Mouse]

Uninstalled the floppy drivers; the floppy was supposedly detected and drivers installed upon reboot (It said nothing about "floppy on Catweasel"), but again the floppy light stays on all the time, the ImageTool doesn't detect the drive, if I stick a floppy in, Windows XP doesn't detect the floppy.

*Gah!*

[ChrisUnionNJ]

Originally Posted by Narf the Mouse

Uninstalled the floppy drivers; the floppy was supposedly detected and drivers installed upon reboot (It said nothing about "floppy on Catweasel"), but again the floppy light stays on all the time, the ImageTool doesn't detect the drive, if I stick a floppy in, Windows XP doesn't detect the floppy.

*Gah!*

Make sure pin 1 is lined up with pin 1 on the catweasel red stripe on the ribbon cable is pin 1..

Chris

[Narf the Mouse]

Originally Posted by ChrisUnionNJ

Make sure pin 1 is lined up with pin 1 on the catweasel red stripe on the ribbon cable is pin 1..

Chris

Other side of the cable. I plugged the floppy cord into the floppy drive upside down. The Catweasel plug-in has a handy hole-bump mechanism which means I couldn't plug it in the wrong way there.

Thanks, I tried that just before I got your message. It's happily reading an Amiga floppy disk.

Although some sectors are coming up bad. Or a lot. What do the different sector colours mean? (It also seems to be re-reading). I'm guess red = bad, dark red = very bad, yellow = not so bad and green = fully read.

[Narf the Mouse]

It looks like dark red = not so bad, unless its data on some sectors actually got worse - And since it appears to be doing "additive" re-reads, I hope not.

[Narf the Mouse]

Very important question - If I abort a disk, will it allow me to save the progress and resume later (from that point)?

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Narf the Mouse

Very important question - If I abort a disk, will it allow me to save the progress and resume later (from that point)?

The ImageTool is not that clever, IIRC.

Try it on one of the better disks in your collection hat you've already imaged. Abort quite early on and see what options are offered.

If you manage to save a part-completed image but it won't let you resume, you can always ignore those sectors on the second run and then overwrite the first part of the second file with the first file using a binary file editor like Cygnus Hex Editor FREE EDITION.

[Narf the Mouse]

...I haven't managed to image anything.

[prowler]

In your opinion, is the problem caused by the ImageTool not working properly, or do you think the ImageTool works but your disks are not in sufficiently good condition?

It sounds to me like it's your disks and not the ImageTool, but if you're not sure, have you tried the beta tool and driver?

In my experience, old disks tend to revive after being used again. This is probably the result of the cleaning action of the tissue inside the disk enclosure rubbing against the recording surface of the spinning disk.

[Narf the Mouse]

It's either the floppy disks or the floppy disk drives. Someone in another thread wondered if maybe the floppy drive wasn't faulty: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=54921 - I made a second thread for what to do after I managed to correctly install the Catweasel.

Trying them.

From being mostly red?

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Narf the Mouse

Trying them.

From being mostly red?

I mostly use TSGui on my Amiga 1200 for imaging Amiga floppy disks.

I recently started on a batch of 191 floppies that had been stored in an attic for the last 10 years. 38 of them failed to provide a valid image at the first attempt with no retries.

With retries, another 13 gave valid images.

And finally, trying the remaining disks in different floppy drives, another 11 gave up their data.

So 24 disks, which originally had read errors were eventually persuaded to read satisfactorily by persistence.

Since then, another three have been recovered with disk recovery software, but there are still 11 unresolved disks.

It has taken three months to get 27 of the 38 problematic disks imaged.

The above is an example of the sort of recovery you can get from a batch of initially bad disks with a bit of perseverance.

[Narf the Mouse]

Well, thanks. Mine's going the other way, though. I've got about 25/25 no read on the first try.

Anyway, I'll leave one of the more promising ones so far in there for 99 retries. See if it does anything.