Catweasel
Contents |
user manual
Media:Catweasel-usermanual.pdf for MK4 and MK4plus models
Media:Kylwalda_english.pdf for Kylwalda add-on, usable with Catweasel models up to MK3
Media:Kylwalda_additional_english.pdf special Kylwalda instructions for use in A1200 computers made by Amiga Inc. (not Commodore)
Media:Kylwalda_deutsch.pdf Bedienungsanleitung für Kylwalda Adapter, welcher mit Catweasel Modellen bis MK3 verwendet werden kann.
Models
Catweasel is a universal floppy disk controller that uses unmodified PC diskdrives. The Catweasel can handle nearly any disk format, you just have to find a drive for them.
Catweasel ISA
The ISA version of this controller is supported by the latest Windows drivers, and it can also be used in Amithlon. Please note that Amithlon support is both experimental and orphaned. Although reported to be working OK, there is no official support for Catweasel ISA in Amithlon systems. Use File:ISA CAT.lha as a replacement of multidisk.device in the Amithlon system, and edit all mount files found in File:Cwdisk0100.lha to use ISAcatweasel.device.
DOS drivers (read-only) for this controller were last updated on november 25th, 1997. File:CW ISA diskV110.zip
Write tool for DOS, experimental, by external author, not officially supported: File:Cw write.zip
For a register-level programming description, please click here.
Catweasel MK2
This model and it's current successor "Catweasel MK2 anniversary edition" have their own page: Catweasel MK2
Catweasel MK3
Use the MK4 drivers on PC, or Amiga drivers (linked to from the MK2 page) for this model. Short instructions are a single page. A register-level programming documentation for the Catweasel MK3 can be downloaded here.
Kylwalda add-on
This adapter allowed using a single disk drive with two controllers: The on-board floppy controller and the Catweasel. Switching between the controllers was done automatically. The device became popular because it could also be used stand-alone in order to use a 1.44M drive as Amiga-880K drive. Note that Kylwalda can only be used with Catweasel models up to MK3. Starting with the MK4 version, the functionality was integrated into the Catweasel controller.
Catweasel MK4 / MK4plus
The Catweasel MK4plus replaces the Catweasel MK4, which is sold out and discontinued. The main changes are of cosmetic nature, but there have also been improvements made following customer feedback in some places.
The one easily visible change is that the new card is no longer low-profile PCI compliant. This feature of the old Catweasel MK4 was rarely used by customers, so it was decided to use the increased space for a better arrangement of the two SID sockets. These are more easily accessible now. Additional filters in the audio part are geared towards filtering noise from high-performance graphics cards and low-quality power supplies. Another novelty is the external audio jack and an angled internal audio connector for better accessibility.
Windows Driver
Development snapshot
32bit Drivers (16/11/2009)
- BUGFIX: Mouse driver goes idle after a while so it does no more block the power manager. This fixes the last known power manager related bug and should make screensavers and sleepmode work for everyone again.
- NEW: ioctl to write raw track index to index
Imagetool
Development snapshot
WARNING: Since the codec is currently undergoing heavy changes, many formats will currently not write correctly. We are working on it :) However, since this is a tedious process which takes a lot of time, please report if a certain format that you want to use is broken, so we can fix the most used formats first.
Catweasel Tools (16/11/2009)
- codec: NEW: added capability to load user defined formats (WARNING: this is incomplete!) The following formats are supported:
- libdskrc - the config file for libdsk (libdskrc.txt, rename to libdskrc)
- fdprm - the config file for the linux fdutils package (fdprm.txt, rename to fdprm)
- NEW: added write capability to Apple-2e format
- NEW: added write capability to Apple-Mac 800k and 400k formats
- NEW: added seperate format for Amiga Disks with NTSC timing
- NEW: MSDOS 1680k
- NEW: Robotron/KC85 UDOS 170k
- NEW: Panasonic/W3010 720k
- NEW: Oric 336k and Oric 357k
- NEW: Atari 1050;XF551 ED 130k
- NEW: Atari 1050;XF551 DD 180k
- NEW: Atari XF551 DD 360k
- NEW: Atari Blackbox HD 1440k
- NEW: Atari XF551 DD 720k
- BUGFIX: HP 4145B Format now properly reads and writes
- imagetool: NEW: added RPM detection to preferences dialog
- NEW: seperate histogram window/tool replaces the "signal" tab
- NEW: using native file dialogs in windows now
- NEW: added max-retries option
- BUGFIX: preferences are now properly saved to .ini file
- NEW: added 600rpm and 3" in drive options
- cw_config: NEW: added various hardware tests
- cw_img: NEW: this is merely a bunch of my test code bundled to look like some sort of commandline imagetool :) it might be useable for some, but don't expect it to work correctly under all conditions.
- cw_raw: NEW: the remaining rest of my test code :) at some point this is going to be the tool you can use to create raw images of your disks so you can send them over for us to analyze and add (or fix) a certain format.
Third party software
The following Programs are Ports of Software which was either not written and/or is not supported by Individual Computers. Nevertheless, all of them come with Sourcecode and patches are ofcourse accepted and more than welcome.
cw2dmk (16/11/2009)
- NEW: This is the initial port of Tim Mann's excellent FM/MFM/M2M Image reader/writer.
- NEW: reading images appearently works properly. feedback needed :)
hardsid-dll (16/11/2009)
- NEW: This is a simple dll which wraps the legacy hardsid.dll API to equivalent catweasel driver calls, so old applications which use hardsid.dll can be used with the catweasel. I knocked it up because someone wanted to use sidplay2w, which doesnt have direct support for the catweasel.
- NEW: first little prototype supporting the minimum features. seems to work with sidplay2w and goattracker.
Links
- Catweasel on wikipedia
- Catweasel Floppy Read/Write Tools for TRS-80 & DEC RX02 diskettes (now taken over by Quentin Barnes)
- Quentin Barnes' CW Linux tools (Kernel and user space)
- ACID 64 Player - C64 Music Player for all HardSID cards and the Catweasel MK series
- Karsten Scheibler's Linux kernel driver and command-line utility
- Michael Krause's Linux block-device kernel driver
- Christian Bauer's CBM disk read/write tool
- Arjuna floppy controller software homepage
- AmigaOS & MorphOS driver development page
