catweasel help

[Marcuz]

i've just bought me a catweasel mk4 from amigakit.

on the packaging there is the actual pci card

a strange short 34 pin cable / strange flat connector (looks like it could got plugged in the pci connector of the board???)

a 3x 34 pin flat cable manual, pins and audio cables.

i understand that i have to connect floppy disk to the black plug on the board, but the manual isn't clear about the other 34 white plug: do i have to connect it on the board or not?
and if so do i have to use the 3 plugs long cable? and if so which of the 3 plugs on it to fit in and on the motherboard? thank you very much!

[Jope]

White plug goes towards motherboard floppy connector (short 34pin cable between these), black plug towards disk drives (three connector 34pin, first connector to catweasel, other two are for disk drives).

[Marcuz]

but the short plug doesn't fit on the white slot and being 5 cm long, it will never reach the motherboard ???

[Jope]

Ok, I found a picture with the package contents on amiga-hardware..

You can forget about the short cable, it is for connecting 5.25" drives to the cable with three connectors.. It sits between the drive and the floppy cable.

[Marcuz]

i've finally made the catweasel work, with Winuae only, through TwicPort, as (after having bought it, silly me) i learned that there are no driver for it in Vista and XP 64-bit environment.

i've tested the catweasel with an old Megastar joystick that i found on internet and i never tryed on real amiga:

it works but it's really cranky, it could not steer for instance in a driving game but it could work barely on a shoot em up.

my question is: is it bound to be the catweasel through tvicport, or the joystick or the catweasel any way, meaning it could not produce a exact emulation of the amiga joystick ports or something?

if it's just twicport' fault, i will install it in my old windows xp 32 bit PC, but it would be a little wasted on me, so i would liketo be sure.

[Marcuz]

reinstalled everything on windows XP 32 bit. after some struggle, the drivers seems ok on the device panel but the joystick, even if they appear on the joystick panel of windows, don't aknowledge any input.

also, how much time does it take for the disk tool to read a standard Amiga 880kb disk?

[Marcuz]

now i've tryed it with winuae, and the joysticks (of course) don't work, do i have to install IO.whatever nevertheless? did not the driversof catweasel were supposed to work without all of that on windows 32 bit?

also, the disk that i imaged through disktools, (it took half an hour to), saved as adf, is unreadable by winuae, and it was a normal dos disk.

is there something i should try?

[Marcuz]

New gripes...

i reinstalled the Catweasel recently on a Windows Vista 32 BIT.

the drivers installation is fine and, differently from the past (windowsXP) the drivers got installed at first try, only one reset required, and then the hardware is stably there to be used.

the joystics are working ok too.

the disks behave erratically, as follows.
after a clean reset, if i put in a blank PC floppy and format it, i can use it normally on windows: copy files launch them from there.

then i start the imaging tool and i image correctly an Amiga DOS disk, that test then in Winuae.

After that, the floppy drive is no more seen by Windows, the pc disks are not usable and the image tool finds every amiga disk i put in as of unrecognized format, even the amiga dos disk i just imaged

this behaviour do happen with both WindowsXP 32 bit and Vista 32 bit: it is the same thing that happened when i last installed Catweasel.

info:

- i use the last drivers available, CWMK4020407.

- the catweasel is attached to the floppy drive with the 3 plugs ribbon cable, using the plugs at the extreemes, the middle one is empty: i've tested the middle one too with no difference.

- a flat ribbon cable connects the catweasel to the board.

- no other cable used (sid etc)

any idea on how to make the drive stay alive?

[rkauer]

Contacting Jens about the problems?

[Marcuz]

done already, and he answered promptly, but the problem is not solved, so far.

he pointed me to newer drivers, i have completely wiped out the older ones, disinstalled, installed the version 2.5 and used the new imagetool: now it does not read a single disk.
windows explorer still works on pc disks though.

i have used the configuration ini to test some settings but no difference at all (but the fact that, quite surprisingly it saw the pc drive as a 5 inches one as default if you use it: you have to manually correct it)

the other odd thing, is that the while the auto detect function in the imaging tool comes out always with a requester saying "nal" whereas the older one was "format unknown", if you try to read the disk nevertheless, the numeric counter stays at 0 of 1760 ! and the dotted display goes on reading the disk undefinitely, starting again when it reaches the 79th track...

other info:
my pc drive is recognized as a standard floppy disk (i.e. no producer) on the device manager: i don't know if particular drivers should be loaded instead.
could it be a interrupt problem? the device manager don't signal any, still...

[rkauer]

You always can try another floppy. Just to extent the test.

[Marcuz]

another floppy disk? i tryed many with the same result.
but as for floppy drives, i have just this one. :/

next tome i'll reboot windows (tomorrow) i'll try again and see if it reads at least just one disk, as it was doing yesterday

[stainy]

Your lucky you`ve got it working.. on a clean -reinstall of windows.. my machine reboots continiously until I take the card out.. when I install the drivers from within windows.. as soon as it tries to install the catwea2k.sys my machine blue screens and reboots!!

[thor]

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

my pc drive is recognized as a standard floppy disk (i.e. no producer) on the device manager: i don't know if particular drivers should be loaded

That should be ok, but does it also list "floppy on catweasel"?

i have used the configuration ini to test some settings but no difference at all (but the fact that, quite surprisingly it saw the pc drive as a 5 inches one as default if you use it: you have to manually correct it)

What exactly did you change? On mine the new imager also reported a 5,25" drive, so I changed in cwconfig.ini: drives=2 to drives=1 and renamed [drive1] to [drive2] and vice versa (so the 3,5" is [drive1]) and ran the exe to update the config. Check in the options that your drive is set to 3,5" and 300 rpm.

[Marcuz]

Originally Posted by stainy

Your lucky you`ve got it working.. on a clean -reinstall of windows.. my machine reboots continiously until I take the card out.. when I install the drivers from within windows.. as soon as it tries to install the catwea2k.sys my machine blue screens and reboots!!

that happened to me too, on WindowsXP 64bit, with the drivers from last year. but that aside, i'm sorry, i don't know hoe to solve it.

Originally Posted by thor

That should be ok, but does it also list "floppy on catweasel"?

What exactly did you change? On mine the new imager also reported a 5,25" drive, so I changed in cwconfig.ini: drives=2 to drives=1 and renamed [drive1] to [drive2] and vice versa (so the 3,5" is [drive1]) and ran the exe to update the config. Check in the options that your drive is set to 3,5" and 300 rpm.

ye it is listed (it worked even one time with a perfect ADF read. just one, that is.

i changed the options exactly like that too... :/

i wait an answer from Jens, after the weekend...

[stainy]

You might get a reply during the weekend.. I did..

[Marcuz]

just an update.

i've been able to read some more disks and, having tested them with winuae,
they are fine.

I'm using now the last drivers (2.5) on Window Vista 32bit (tested on
windowsXP 32bit with the same results).
to make catweasel read any disk, i have to:

1) insert a formatted PC 1440kb disk in the drive.
2) open it in windows, maybe copy some file inside to make sure the drive is
working properly.
3) start the imagetool and swap the disk with an amiga one.
4) read it: now it may happen that it reads fine or that it find lots of bad
data and missing headers. if so, each time the read goes to end, it starts
again trying to fix the bad data.

i've let it do so a couple of times, noticing that some of the bad data
(yellow bits in the imagetool) may get fixed, while the missing headers (red) are
not.
when at least one pass is completed, the adf image is created, and when
aborted the read, it may be tested with winuae, and much of the data, if not
all is salvaged correctly.
if all the dots are red, probably the disk was wrongly readed and you should start again from step 1

if the read was completed with at least some green dots, the disk was fine or it was half assed, but catweasel at least worked.
if i start then another read, the reading stops at the first clusters.
i have to close the imagetool and reopen it.

when i do so, if i start another read, 90% of the times, even with a disk
previously read fine, all the clusters are missing header and the reading
would go on indefinitely.
10% of the times, the disk is read.

so i can try to start again from step 1 (insert a pc disk) and sometimes it
works.
if it does not, i have to reset windows and start again.

the installation of the drivers, as i said is fine: the previous versions i
had deleted from anywhere in the computer (system32 and drivers repository)
and the drivers date in the device manager is correct.

the ribbon cables are correctly plugged, but the card itself is inserted in
the first PCI plug, i've read that that may cause some I/O problem?
however, no interrupt conflict is reported in the device manager.

do you have any idea about how can i fix that?

also, should i ever change the standard options about rpm and density? which currently are 300 and 96?

[Toni Wilen]

I now have Vista 32-bit PC ("media pc" connected to projector for 720p/1080p stuff, Xbox+XBMC just can't do it anymore ) and decided to test CW MK4..

Unfortunately software is still crap.

imagetool:

- disk write protected and writing adf: still writes and verifys ok. right..
- disk never works after writing (verify is still ok in imagetool..)
- GUI and file dialog has ancient look. Can't even use network shares..
- does do nothing if run without admin privileges, not even error message appears.. (why does it need admin privileges when CW driver can be used as a standard user?)

I guess thats enough for now..

Good hardware + bad software = useless hardware.

[Marcuz]

i guess i agree, sadly.
at least newest Winuae uses its joystick ports with no problem, but the imaging is nowhere as good as it should be expected from a solution dedicated just to that!

[Toni Wilen]

2.6.0 software was released recently. Decided to do another imagetool test.

After few standard CW driver install bluescreens ("standard" bluescreen after first install, also bluescreens if you forget to install ALL CW drivers with newer version before rebooting)

Unfortunately software is still crap.

imagetool:

Much better crap now

- disk write protected and writing adf: still writes and verifys ok. right..

Fixed!

- disk never works after writing (verify is still ok in imagetool..)

Fixed (imagetool written disk even works on my real Amiga now!)

- GUI and file dialog has ancient look. Can't even use network shares..

Still the same mega-ugly GUI and stupid dialog.

- does do nothing if run without admin privileges, not even error message appears.. (why does it need admin privileges when CW driver can be used as a standard user?)

Fixed. Now it works properly as a standard user.