Catweasel Driver / Updates

[IFW]

Sadly, the last time you told us about the device it was the 7 (8?) bit counter.
If there is really a super secret mode, allowing better - too bad, if it's not usable by anyone, it's as good as not existing.
It's a bit difficult to say anything unless you tell about it.

Everone knows that I'd have been very happy not to deal with KF at all; and we asked you about these features. The description of the limitation comes directly from you - an update on that would have been nice.

Unfortunately, you completely ignore the fact that we are dealing with professionaly duplicated disks.
Disks, that were written with a device having 50ns resolution and 25ns for pre-compensation.

"Now once and for all: Quit making false claims. You can't break the laws of nature. You can't even bend them. However, you're breaking EU laws by misleading customers."

Well said, saved some time coming up with it! Well, apart from please stop spreading FUD about KF - we never ever did about CW, but your blind hatred of having imaginary competition made you post those things.

As I said KF is not a competing product; if we wanted it to be we could have gone out of our way to make badmouthing advertising like you did - against us, when we never ever said anything bad about CW.

Thank you.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by IFW

Unfortunately, you completely ignore the fact that we are dealing with professionaly duplicated disks.
Disks, that were written with a device having 50ns resolution and 25ns for pre-compensation.

...in disk drives that sample with 4MHz.

q.e.d.

Jens

[IFW]

Assuming others' knowledge well... there is a saying: "Never assume you'll just make and ass out of you and me"

Posts made by you or on behalf of you look indeed very bad.
If it's someone impersonating you - I'd chase it up for sure.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by IFW

Posts made by you or on behalf of you look indeed very bad.

Is that all you have to say against facts that have hard, underlying numbers? Hmm... maybe you're coming up with a super-secret scientific paper that challenges the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem ;-)

This is where I leave the last word up to you. I'm out - good night.

Jens

[IFW]

Good night

[fiath]

From memory, I seem to remember we talked to you in the context of the Mk3. Is it true that the Mk4 hardware basically a Mk3 firmware in an FPGA? If so, I can't see what difference it makes. Why do you keep your documentation restricted btw? Isn't it in your interest to spread it as wide as possible?

Please stop with the accusations of false claims. I think you should be very grateful we don't talk about your product. Things only blow up when you come charging in with this stuff. It's really not a very professional attitude.

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Your press release was not changed until I had to quote laws. So now you want to put me in a bad position by defending myself against false claims?

I think this is a typical example of your attitude Jens. It was not very clear from the information available about Catweasel that it supported Apple DOS 3.2 and 3.3. Instead of simply letting us know and asking us to change it, you charged in right in with legal threats.

[fiath]

Oh, you've gone? Oh well... Feel free to answer the above if you have time.

[8bitbubsy]

Originally Posted by fiath

It was not very clear from the information available about Catweasel that it supported Apple DOS 3.2 and 3.3. Instead of simply letting us know and asking us to change it, you charged in right in with legal threats.

Originally Posted by http://www.jschoenfeld.com/products/catweasel_e.htm

Apple IIe disks (Apple DOS 3.3 and up)

At least it mentions 3.3... I spent 10 seconds on google finding that site.

[fiath]

Well, then I can see why we originally wrote what we did then. Our original press release said:

Also, as far as we are aware, KryoFlux is the only system that can produce sector dumps for both Apple DOS 3.2 and 3.3 disks without interfacing to original drives and/or machines."

(emphasis added)

Anyway, we would have changed it regardless - all he needed to do was ask...

[Toni Wilen]

I'll have to add comment too..

Jens, I am also disappointed with your attitude, all critique taken as personal attacks when there is little competition. (and "competition" only happened because you didn't want to listen and apparently thought no one else would bother with this)

I have even tried to "support" catweasel in emulation (as much as I can with 64-bit issue), I am not so sure if I want to do that anymore. Ok, KF does not have joystick ports so it isn't complete replacement

Perhaps your hardware does everything that SPS needs but it really is useless piece of technology without software and documentation. No one knows how brilliant it is inside, there is no way to know. It seems CW (and other your hardware) have military secrets and information is only available in need to know basis. That era of thinking has long gone, openness is expected today.

<speculation>
I guess the real problem (which has been, not so surprisingly, sidestepped) is that larger sampling rate and/or multirevolution sampling don't fit in internal memory and on the fly streaming isn't working (oops, I didn't mean "not working", I meant higher being said it is not needed)
</speculation>

[Schoenfeld]

Funny how I'm trying to get into numbers and physics as good as I can, and answers to these questions are being avoided.

Then I'm accused of getting personal, while the technical issues pointed out here are not answered. Guys, no matter with how many persons/moderators you're posting here, you won't change physics. Get down to the numbers, and we can continue. Continue like you've done here (and elsewhere), and I'm out. Please pardon that I'm not open enough to challenge the laws of physics.

Jens

[Loedown]

Bitter little cauldron on the stove this one, when I email the SPS guys, or even send disks I get responses and quickly, if I ask questions I get answers.

Windows is a bastard to code for, or so I think, even so it doesn't take a Rhodes Scholar to update drivers and rewrite code if there's bugs and problems. Lack of support has been the biggest bugbear of CW, you're just one man Jens and your attitude stinks to high heaven. Toni Wilen is one man and his support for the Amiga scene has been massive, now you even inadvertently scorn his efforts to where CW will become nothing more than a painful memory for most.

I'm currently designing a very complex synthesizer and when it's finished the units will have their own schematics, technical data and solid documentation, the only thing to remain secretive is the PIC code, which is mostly display driver and MIDI. I'll be supporting the people that support me.

[TCD]

Hmm, the main purpose of Kyroflux is to have a PC device that can make 'perfect' images of old floppies, isn't it? Seems like the guys of SPS really tried to ask you Jens to make that possible with Catweasel and seems like it isn't/wasn't supported (totally different question if it is possible in theory). Guess they have a valid point to take Rich Alpin's idea and make a viable device from it that serves this purpose. Not sure about those claims (from both sides) about mud throwing at each other, but I think in the end that won't matter much anyway. What matter is the capability of the device to read (and maybe write back) original disks and that not only in theory. You haven't really said why Catweasel doesn't support that if it is capable, so that would be the question I'd like to ask.

[Interceptor]

TCD pretty much sums it up for us.

i know personally i'm sick and tired of frustrated people posting and asking for us to co-operate with Jens just so their catweasel suddenly has value for them after they've paid out for it.

we wanted to co-operate ages ago even while CW was in developement, he basically ignored our advice and turned down co-operation several times, and as you can all see they guy isnt much fun to deal with either.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

You haven't really said why Catweasel doesn't support that if it is capable, so that would be the question I'd like to ask.

I don't know why the question comes up - did anyone care to look at the latest beta drivers that allow saving such a raw image? It's been there since november of last year. Although not mentioned in the news, it has been made public in the forums - the same forums where SPS people are active.

http://beta.icomp.de

I'm still waiting for an answer how the laws of physics can be broken. Oh, sorry, that's bad attitude.. hmm. I should better not use common sense, as it won't get me far. No matter what I write or say, you'll see it as a personal attack anyway.

Jens

[TCD]

Fair enough then. The bit about the news might explain why people like me have no idea it was added in the latest beta driver and I guess it's the same for most people reading this thread here. Just my two cents and good to know about that feature.

[Toni Wilen]

Ooh, "hidden" place that "no one" knew about.. You really need better way to communicate or something.

Really nice. Imgtool finally looks to be usable, all issues that annoyed me seems to be fixed, raw writing and strong hints of 64-bit driver really appearing. (still nothing about streaming but much better than nothing)

Perhaps I can write disks again with catweasel sooner than with KF

EDIT: imagetool at least uses real file dialogs but it still has quite weird user interface.. and it again defaulted to 360rpm 5.25" drive

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

http://beta.icomp.de

Thanks for that, Jens!

That's the first I've heard about the availability of Beta drivers, despite having bought MkI and MkIV Catweasel devices, both from approved Individual Computing resellers, and having personally written to you about adding support for new formats, enclosing both example floppy disks and corresponding images of them on a CD-R.

[Borg_Number_One]

Hi.

in the past I frequently checked the eab.abime.net forum for:
a) Catweasel
b) KryoFlux
c) Cyclone20

...related news.

Some minutes ago I found this thread and did read it.

Received impressions:
1)
Good news: Jens Schoenfeld seems to be back to the eab.abime.net.
Its great.

2)
Sadly, some words and phrases will be misinterpreted as attacks.

3)
Unanswered questions about...:
a)
"How to use Catweasel for making backups from Amiga floppies with no default density/densities, exotic track numbers or other tricks?"

b)
"How can a programmer get access to really all Catweasel's abilities?"
(...for example writing programs that can do: "a)" ...or for example writing .ipf files back to real floppy disk with Catweasel.)
...will be decently sidestepped.

These points: "Catweasel and IPF-support" / "Catweasel and copy protected floppies"
...have been discussed very often (you can use the search in the forum feature),
but no decent solution or no: "The Individual Computers team is working on adding the wanted features." -statement have been reported in the past / in the forums.

So the logical effect was/is that other users searched and found/developed solutions for the problem of backing up special / non-default Amiga floppy disks (I try to avoid the phrase: "copy protected" :-) ).

4.)
Good news about: beta.icomp.de
Well, it was the first time I heard about the beta site.
Other users seem to be surprised too.

Its a little sad that there accrued an impression that Jens seems to make a little secret about beta.icomp.de (http://www.google.de/#q="beta.icomp.de"+Catweasel --> only six results)
...and about more Catweasel programming details.


Well, after reading the "news" about beta.icomp.de, I...
a)
...will switch on my backup PC again (a computer with classic hardware: SCSI controller, SCSI CDROM drives, SCSI hard disk drives, different SCSI tape drives, Catweasel MK4, 5,25'' and 3,5'' floppy drive.) and will do many tests with special / non default Amiga floppy disks :-)
b)
... believe in Catweasel developments and new Catweasel features again.

Thank you very much for that, Jens!

[_ThEcRoW]

Weren't the sps guys supposed to work when they receive free hardware from jens?. That's a very friendly approach to cooperation.