Having trouble getting CatWeasel to read disks

Hello,

I am trying to get a Catweasel MKIV Plus I just purchased to make Amiga disk images from old Amiga 1000 disks. I have installed the card in my PC. I am using an older (5-10 years old) Sony PC drive to read the disks. I am using ImageTool3.

Unfortunately, when I click "read image" and try to save an image from the Amiga disk, it consistently reads only red sectors (occasionally a few yellow sectors), meaning that it considers the disk unreadable.

Now, understand that I have a working Amiga 1000 and the disks work fine on the Amiga.

What gives, folks? Can you suggest something so I can get this operation off the ground?

Thanks bunches,

Erik

[prowler]

There are issues with the latest version of ImageTool, even with the latest drivers installed.

Make sure you have this driver and ImageTool set:
Drivers: http://siliconsonic.de/t/bin/CWMK42600.zip
ImageTool HotFix: http://siliconsonic.de/t/bin/imagetool_hotfix.zip

Okay, I've installed the new drivers and the old ImageTool you linked to (v2.3). ImageTool *seems* to read the Amiga disk (which I understand means it actually created a disk image somewhere on the hard drive), but for the life of me, I cannot figure out where that disk image was saved, nor under what name.

Any suggestions?

[prowler]

Originally Posted by faynce

I cannot figure out where that disk image was saved, nor under what name.

Any suggestions?

Drop down to the Command Prompt and type:
cd\
dir *.adf /s
and try this for each of your logical hard drives.

It should list all the .ADF (Amiga Disk File) files on your machine.

If that doesn't work, then I don't know what will!

Did it ask you for a filename? It may have used the Volume Name assigned by Workbench and appended the .ADF extension.

When finished at the Command Prompt, type exit.

Figured it out. IT WORKS! WOOT! Thank you!

Now, I have noticed that on many disks, it so happens that some of the sectors appear to be bad.

Is this common? Can this be fixed?

[prowler]

Could you try imaging those disks with bad sectors on your amiga using TSGui or some such track saver?

[IFW]

Originally Posted by faynce

Figured it out. IT WORKS! WOOT! Thank you!

Now, I have noticed that on many disks, it so happens that some of the sectors appear to be bad.

Is this common? Can this be fixed?

If they are just hard to read, chances are KryoFlux can read them. If they have physical defects they are only partially readable, if at all.
www.softpres.org

All of the disk images are being saved as file type "file," not type ".adf." They still work in WinUAE, though.

Is there any way to save them as .adf files? I don't see the option in ImageTool.

[prowler]

Hi faynce,

What size files is ImageTool producing from your Amiga disks?

880k

[prowler]

Well, the ImageTool is working and the filesize is correct, but it seems like you actually need to provide the .adf extension to get the images saved as *.adf files.

But as to the reason why the ImageTool is detecting bad sectors on your disks, you're really going to have to use a different method of imaging them for comparison in order to determine the cause of the problem.

The Catweasel card will actually perform much better if you use a separate floppy drive exclusively with the card instead of sharing the floppy drive with your Windows PC.

I'm assuming that you can't produce .adf images of the disks using your Amiga, or else you'd have tried it, so have you got two floppy disk drives on your PC? If you have, you could use Disk2FDI to image the disks.

The images ImageTool produces work fine. Just one last question:

ImageTool never seems to be able to produce images of commercial disks, such as games and other software. It always claims bad sectors right at sector 0 or at sector 11.

Any way around that?

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by faynce

The images ImageTool produces work fine. Just one last question:

ImageTool never seems to be able to produce images of commercial disks, such as games and other software. It always claims bad sectors right at sector 0 or at sector 11.

Any way around that?

Catweasel doesn't do errors, you were better off waiting for Kryoflux which does do errors and everything else.

[prowler]

@faynce,

Loedown isn't talking about errors caused by physical disk damage, etc. The read errors you are finding on commercial disks, such as games and other software are caused by copy protection.

There are indeed ways of defeating copy protection, but not with the Catweasel controller, which wasn't designed with that in mind.

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by prowler

@faynce,

Loedown isn't talking about errors caused by physical disk damage, etc. The read errors you are finding on commercial disks, such as games and other software are caused by copy protection.

There are indeed ways of defeating copy protection, but not with the Catweasel controller, which wasn't designed with that in mind.

Prowler is very right, I should have been more specific.

Copy protection can be done in a number of ways, but one quite effective way from a C64 / Amiga perspective is to simply put erros into sectors of the disk and make the code look for these errors, Disector on the C64 was great for this. Amiga is more complex, the errors could be varied in many ways and have been the discussion amongst many participants here, look for weak bits and long tracks.

I imagine I'll be able to find most of the games online for download. Thanks!