Catweasel MK4 discussion

ElectroBlaster · 20 November 2005, 16:55

Ok chaps! I need to know from you all how your getting on with your catweasel mk4's because im going to throw mine at the rate its playing up!

From the word go the drivers played up, Ive had the machine suddenly reset for no reason and once it asked for all the drivers again as if it was never installed?

Now im having a major problem with the machine booting! you start from cold and the pc reset's after the initial bios run, as it goes to boot windows I get a sudden reset and then it will work after a list of options about a severe crash!

So I removed the catweasel and guess what! no problems, put the catweasel back in and the trouble starts again

this is driving me mad lol

Toni Wilen · 20 November 2005, 17:23

I have got similar experiences, random bluescreens while booting. It is the driver.

"Fortunately" I use 64-bit Windows now which means I don't have any problems because there are no 64-bit drivers

. Unfortunately it means there won't be new CW features in WinUAE until 64-bit drivers are released.

ElectroBlaster · 20 November 2005, 19:03

Yes I had this nagging doubt it was the drivers causing this! Im just really gutted at the moment

BTW! Excellent work on winuae m8! I hardly have an issue with it

Zetr0 · 20 November 2005, 19:08

Heys Electro, your PC's symptoms sound similar to IRQ steering faults,

if i may be so bold, could i recomend a couple of attempts for you to try.

I am of course assuming you have not tried them if you have, thats cools tell me to shut the hell up.

okies.. here we go

1) update pc bios to latest version,
Pretty obvious and i am sorry i mentioned it.

2) make sure PCI card is not installed in the first PCI slot
Some motherbaords have difficulty in the allocation of shared and non-shared memory ranges of PCI 1 and AGP at the same time( this can include onboard gfx too), If Catweasle is installed in PCI 1 (right hand most slot next to agp) move it along one to the left PCI 2 as this port does not share DMA and IRQ lines with the AGP (these are HARD LINES dedicated tracks to the North and South Bridges / Other custom chipsets)

The is an option in most PC's bios to Auto Update issued IRQ setting (these are like weights that you put on a line) you may find that by hard forcing an IRQ on some mobos this solves a lot of problems, this being said Forcing an IRQ should only be consderd in the following realms

3/7 COMS

11/10 for GFX /AGP

but if a BIOS concerns you or you dont know what its all about i would suggest you leave it alone.

check these points, if there is still a failure at this level, where you PC's keeps booting i would lean more onto a compatibility or card fault issue, However this being said if it continues without failure.

3) Update windoze, recomend Linux *hehe* couldn't help that.. seriously though update windoze to atleast SP2 for XP and other OS and we need to talk, and you need to download LOL

Hope this helps a little, if you are getting any specific error message, unless its a 0,0 general failure, let me know it should be able to help

Toni Wilen · 20 November 2005, 19:20

No, it is Catweasel driver bug.

I have tested it on 3 different PCs and everyone of them bluescreened after first reboot and had random bluescreens during boot after installing Catweasel driver (+inserted the card)

stainy · 20 November 2005, 19:29

Yes I can concur that that all of the above problems I get too.. with the double booting and `computer has recovered from a serious error` issues

it`s complete rubbish

stainy · 20 November 2005, 19:30

Yeah and you try getting an answer from Jens whoever!! I`ve heard nothing from the getgo!! 3 emails... shite

ElectroBlaster · 20 November 2005, 20:42

Zetro! M8 thanx for the info, im aware of the pci1 slot and agp issue, ive always avoided that slot!

The motherboard is very recent, as with my other pc's, I have an XP-pro cd with a slipstreamed service pack 2 so I never have to install sp2 afterwards, its installed along with xp. So far its worked enougth for me to read and write disk's no problem, its just the stupid boot issues, I got paranoid at first thinking the pc was stuffed!

Ive dabbled with linux when using a homebuilt firewall/router and also when modding an xbox! The problem is I can never find a reliable iso distro to use

I might actually try a dual-boot linux and xp-pro if it will mean a fully working catweasel setup...

EDIT: Anyone tried windows 98se with the catweasel?

Avanze · 21 November 2005, 04:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElectroBlaster

Anyone tried windows 98se with the catweasel?

Not supported with the drivers.

high-5 · 21 November 2005, 08:05

got my catweasel last week. used latest drivers (may 2005) to install card.
without reboot i was not able to read/write amiga disks. after reboot, all drivers had to be installed again, but after that i was able to r/w my old amiga disks.
mounted sids do also work well with acid64.

@Electroblaster: tried a systemrecovery of a point of time without the catweasel?

Zetr0 · 21 November 2005, 11:27

Heys Electro, have you tried Fedora Core 3 or 4 *essentially red hat 11*

(4 is the latest but i have found 3 pretty good)

The only thing to fedora (and redhat in general) is that its a pain to get ANYTHING done when your not in the ROOT account or have its privaledges and ya kinda have to twist its arm some what. but once installed its pretty darn solid, i even took the installed HDD over to another completely different base system, plugged it in and in 2 mins of re-$ in a dos window there it was up and running with my full settings!!!!!! that gets a Zetr0 vote

and i didn`t have to change anything to get E-UAE working *which i find a lot faster under linux, a DDR Athlon 1.4Ghz Linux seems quite the equivalent of the 3200XP WinBox. but you know, untill they get a unified distro linux will be left alone...

shame though fedora on a DVD uses a WHOLE DVD includes a FULL office apps suit, servers email-http ftp etc, services and games, 3.8GB to a max install foot print of 6.7GB of data and is FREE what does windoze come with.... errr a bloatware install of 2.1 Gig from a 650MB CD.... some rudementary apps... infact i am suprised they didn`t charge from the calculator lol...

there are other versions of linux that are pretty cool, but fedora is the best supported at this time,

If you get the opportunity get a lookie at Knoppix, its scary amiga like and can run from CD without the need for a HDD its got apps too

ElectroBlaster · 21 November 2005, 16:46

I havent bothered with an old system recovery, I could try but I know its the catweasel acting up. Ive also learnt to live with the re-boot, the catweasel works ok, ive even got it working in winuae where I took a *.dms image and wrote it directly to a blank floppy disk using diskwiz... the disk even works in a real amiga

Acid64 works great but please god I want stereo support lol, I have two sids here crying out to be heard!

Regarding Linux! Would it better to buy a complete redhat cd set? I could download it using a torrent but its touch & go whether I would get a decent download speed

if at all!

Zetr0 · 21 November 2005, 23:17

hmmm, well lets see i would consider an iso download of the DVD if you can get it and have the d/l bandwidth (you have dsl right? if not now is a good time to beg, borrow or steal for it

)

lets see to start lets get the better supported (make sure to check the mds5.txt for check sum before burning off the iso and installing)

here is a good page for d/l and configing a FC4 dual boot pc.http://fedora.redhat.com/download/

some other interesting ones to look at

*to have fun with

http://www.linux.org/dist/list.html (a good place to search)
http://www.debian.org/ (and theres a nice M68k linux distro too

)
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html (if only all linux was this easy!!)
http://www.suse.com/ (a good introduction with a nice intuitive GUI) i had SAMBA Fileshare server running on a windoze network in 20 mins after install
http://www.smoothwall.org/ (used this for the longest time till i bought a router)

*not for the faint hearted (need to kinda know a lil about linux)

http://www.slackware.com/ ( this is a nice complete linux distro i ran this for a year)

* L337 only

http://www.lynuxworks.com/ (blue cat baby from POS to RTOS to WAR

)
http://www.kyzo.com/ (Linux on a ROM) its a nice thing to play with.
http://flightlinux.gsfc.nasa.gov/ (yeah NASA based cool to say my OS is from is used by NASA)

ElectroBlaster · 22 November 2005, 03:00

Excellent stuff m8

Many thanx for all the links! Im defo not frightend of getting right into linux, im not "leet" as you would put it lol but im pretty good with stuff like this, bieng an amiga owner for so many years gives you a good insight imho!

BTW I have 2meg adsl so I shall get iso hunting and go from there

Avanze · 22 November 2005, 03:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElectroBlaster

Acid64 works great but please god I want stereo support lol, I have two sids here crying out to be heard!

I hear you, that's exactly what I wanted from my Catweasel. Just ask Wilfred for the beta stereo version of Acid64. He is a great guy and will glady help you out here. Although playback of stereo sids is a bit wonky.

I have just ordered a HardSID Quattro anyway, which Acid64 supports too.

Hardcore SID fanatic me is.

high-5 · 22 November 2005, 20:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElectroBlaster

Now im having a major problem with the machine booting! you start from cold and the pc reset's after the initial bios run, as it goes to boot windows I get a sudden reset and then it will work after a list of options about a severe crash!

After playing around with my catweasel for some time i got the same strange behavior mentioned above. Messaged Jens Schönfeld about it and here's the answer recieved yesterday (translated from german):

"I think it is the drivers - new drivers are in beta-phase, please wait some days for them to be released"

with a bit of luck we will see some new drivers appearing soon

ElectroBlaster · 22 November 2005, 20:39

Oi Yoi Yoi!

Yey

Avanze · 22 November 2005, 21:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by high-5

"I think it is the drivers - new drivers are in beta-phase, please wait some days for them to be released"

Awesome news.

stainy · 22 November 2005, 21:16

thank fcuk for that!! hope they get released soon

stainy · 02 January 2006, 11:41

Originally Posted by high-5
"I think it is the drivers - new drivers are in beta-phase, please wait some days for them to be released"

and some days = ???

20 November 2005, 16:55	#1
ElectroBlaster Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Exeter, Devon, UK Age: 49 Posts: 1,714	Catweasel MK4 discussion Ok chaps! I need to know from you all how your getting on with your catweasel mk4's because im going to throw mine at the rate its playing up! From the word go the drivers played up, Ive had the machine suddenly reset for no reason and once it asked for all the drivers again as if it was never installed? Now im having a major problem with the machine booting! you start from cold and the pc reset's after the initial bios run, as it goes to boot windows I get a sudden reset and then it will work after a list of options about a severe crash! So I removed the catweasel and guess what! no problems, put the catweasel back in and the trouble starts again this is driving me mad lol

20 November 2005, 19:08	#4
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	Heys Electro, your PC's symptoms sound similar to IRQ steering faults, if i may be so bold, could i recomend a couple of attempts for you to try. I am of course assuming you have not tried them if you have, thats cools tell me to shut the hell up. okies.. here we go 1) update pc bios to latest version, Pretty obvious and i am sorry i mentioned it. 2) make sure PCI card is not installed in the first PCI slot Some motherbaords have difficulty in the allocation of shared and non-shared memory ranges of PCI 1 and AGP at the same time( this can include onboard gfx too), If Catweasle is installed in PCI 1 (right hand most slot next to agp) move it along one to the left PCI 2 as this port does not share DMA and IRQ lines with the AGP (these are HARD LINES dedicated tracks to the North and South Bridges / Other custom chipsets) The is an option in most PC's bios to Auto Update issued IRQ setting (these are like weights that you put on a line) you may find that by hard forcing an IRQ on some mobos this solves a lot of problems, this being said Forcing an IRQ should only be consderd in the following realms 3/7 COMS 11/10 for GFX /AGP but if a BIOS concerns you or you dont know what its all about i would suggest you leave it alone. check these points, if there is still a failure at this level, where you PC's keeps booting i would lean more onto a compatibility or card fault issue, However this being said if it continues without failure. 3) Update windoze, recomend Linux hehe couldn't help that.. seriously though update windoze to atleast SP2 for XP and other OS and we need to talk, and you need to download LOL Hope this helps a little, if you are getting any specific error message, unless its a 0,0 general failure, let me know it should be able to help Last edited by Zetr0; 20 November 2005 at 19:23.

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20 November 2005, 17:23	#2
Toni Wilen WinUAE developer Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Hämeenlinna/Finland Age: 49 Posts: 26,570	I have got similar experiences, random bluescreens while booting. It is the driver. "Fortunately" I use 64-bit Windows now which means I don't have any problems because there are no 64-bit drivers . Unfortunately it means there won't be new CW features in WinUAE until 64-bit drivers are released.

20 November 2005, 19:03	#3
ElectroBlaster Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Exeter, Devon, UK Age: 49 Posts: 1,714	Yes I had this nagging doubt it was the drivers causing this! Im just really gutted at the moment BTW! Excellent work on winuae m8! I hardly have an issue with it

20 November 2005, 19:20	#5
Toni Wilen WinUAE developer Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Hämeenlinna/Finland Age: 49 Posts: 26,570	No, it is Catweasel driver bug. I have tested it on 3 different PCs and everyone of them bluescreened after first reboot and had random bluescreens during boot after installing Catweasel driver (+inserted the card)

20 November 2005, 19:29	#6
stainy Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Concord, NC, USA Age: 52 Posts: 1,714	Yes I can concur that that all of the above problems I get too.. with the double booting and `computer has recovered from a serious error` issues it`s complete rubbish

20 November 2005, 19:30	#7
stainy Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Concord, NC, USA Age: 52 Posts: 1,714	Yeah and you try getting an answer from Jens whoever!! I`ve heard nothing from the getgo!! 3 emails... shite

20 November 2005, 20:42	#8
ElectroBlaster Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Exeter, Devon, UK Age: 49 Posts: 1,714	Zetro! M8 thanx for the info, im aware of the pci1 slot and agp issue, ive always avoided that slot! The motherboard is very recent, as with my other pc's, I have an XP-pro cd with a slipstreamed service pack 2 so I never have to install sp2 afterwards, its installed along with xp. So far its worked enougth for me to read and write disk's no problem, its just the stupid boot issues, I got paranoid at first thinking the pc was stuffed! Ive dabbled with linux when using a homebuilt firewall/router and also when modding an xbox! The problem is I can never find a reliable iso distro to use I might actually try a dual-boot linux and xp-pro if it will mean a fully working catweasel setup... EDIT: Anyone tried windows 98se with the catweasel?

21 November 2005, 08:05	#10
high-5 Zone Friend Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Cologne, Germany Age: 50 Posts: 52	got my catweasel last week. used latest drivers (may 2005) to install card. without reboot i was not able to read/write amiga disks. after reboot, all drivers had to be installed again, but after that i was able to r/w my old amiga disks. mounted sids do also work well with acid64. @Electroblaster: tried a systemrecovery of a point of time without the catweasel?

21 November 2005, 11:27	#11
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	Heys Electro, have you tried Fedora Core 3 or 4 essentially red hat 11 (4 is the latest but i have found 3 pretty good) The only thing to fedora (and redhat in general) is that its a pain to get ANYTHING done when your not in the ROOT account or have its privaledges and ya kinda have to twist its arm some what. but once installed its pretty darn solid, i even took the installed HDD over to another completely different base system, plugged it in and in 2 mins of re-$ in a dos window there it was up and running with my full settings!!!!!! that gets a Zetr0 vote and i didn`t have to change anything to get E-UAE working *which i find a lot faster under linux, a DDR Athlon 1.4Ghz Linux seems quite the equivalent of the 3200XP WinBox. but you know, untill they get a unified distro linux will be left alone... shame though fedora on a DVD uses a WHOLE DVD includes a FULL office apps suit, servers email-http ftp etc, services and games, 3.8GB to a max install foot print of 6.7GB of data and is FREE what does windoze come with.... errr a bloatware install of 2.1 Gig from a 650MB CD.... some rudementary apps... infact i am suprised they didn`t charge from the calculator lol... there are other versions of linux that are pretty cool, but fedora is the best supported at this time, If you get the opportunity get a lookie at Knoppix, its scary amiga like and can run from CD without the need for a HDD its got apps too

21 November 2005, 16:46	#12
ElectroBlaster Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Exeter, Devon, UK Age: 49 Posts: 1,714	I havent bothered with an old system recovery, I could try but I know its the catweasel acting up. Ive also learnt to live with the re-boot, the catweasel works ok, ive even got it working in winuae where I took a *.dms image and wrote it directly to a blank floppy disk using diskwiz... the disk even works in a real amiga Acid64 works great but please god I want stereo support lol, I have two sids here crying out to be heard! Regarding Linux! Would it better to buy a complete redhat cd set? I could download it using a torrent but its touch & go whether I would get a decent download speed if at all!

21 November 2005, 23:17	#13
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	hmmm, well lets see i would consider an iso download of the DVD if you can get it and have the d/l bandwidth (you have dsl right? if not now is a good time to beg, borrow or steal for it ) lets see to start lets get the better supported (make sure to check the mds5.txt for check sum before burning off the iso and installing) here is a good page for d/l and configing a FC4 dual boot pc.http://fedora.redhat.com/download/ some other interesting ones to look at to have fun with http://www.linux.org/dist/list.html (a good place to search) http://www.debian.org/ (and theres a nice M68k linux distro too ) http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html (if only all linux was this easy!!) http://www.suse.com/ (a good introduction with a nice intuitive GUI) i had SAMBA Fileshare server running on a windoze network in 20 mins after install http://www.smoothwall.org/ (used this for the longest time till i bought a router) not for the faint hearted (need to kinda know a lil about linux) http://www.slackware.com/ ( this is a nice complete linux distro i ran this for a year) * L337 only http://www.lynuxworks.com/ (blue cat baby from POS to RTOS to WAR ) http://www.kyzo.com/ (Linux on a ROM) its a nice thing to play with. http://flightlinux.gsfc.nasa.gov/ (yeah NASA based cool to say my OS is from is used by NASA)

22 November 2005, 03:00	#14
ElectroBlaster Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Exeter, Devon, UK Age: 49 Posts: 1,714	Excellent stuff m8 Many thanx for all the links! Im defo not frightend of getting right into linux, im not "leet" as you would put it lol but im pretty good with stuff like this, bieng an amiga owner for so many years gives you a good insight imho! BTW I have 2meg adsl so I shall get iso hunting and go from there

22 November 2005, 20:39	#17
ElectroBlaster Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Exeter, Devon, UK Age: 49 Posts: 1,714	Oi Yoi Yoi! Yey

22 November 2005, 21:16	#19
stainy Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Concord, NC, USA Age: 52 Posts: 1,714	thank fcuk for that!! hope they get released soon

02 January 2006, 11:41	#20
stainy Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Concord, NC, USA Age: 52 Posts: 1,714	Originally Posted by high-5 "I think it is the drivers - new drivers are in beta-phase, please wait some days for them to be released" and some days = ???

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