Catweasel MK2
Catweasel MK2 and it's current successor Catweasel MK2 anniversary edition are advanced floppy controllers mainly developed for A1200 and A4000 computers. It can also be used on a next-generation Amiga or Linux-PC using a special IDE cable and OS4 drivers.
The fastest way to give a HD diskdrive to your Amiga! Compared to a standard Amiga-HD drive, Catweasel-drives are up to 2.6 times faster! This peak value is reached when accessing PC 1440K disks. The performance on Amiga HD disks is also very good: We have cracked the speed barrier of 50 seconds for reading a whole Amiga 1760K disk. A HD drive by any other vendor takes more than 80 seconds for the same operation. The Catweasel software is programmed totally system-conform: Programs like ReOrg, Shapeshifter, Fusion, PCx, Frodo, CrossDos and CrossMac work fine with the Catweasel. The latest version of Diavolo Backup also supports the Catweasel, so you can make backups on XTRA HD disks with 2380K per disk!
Contents |
download
Driver disk as included by January 2000: File:Cwdisk0100.lha
latest update to multidisk.device including OpenPCI support for using Catweasel MK3 and MK4 in Amiga PCI-boards: File:Multidisk365.lha. Note that this driver supports all versions that can be connected to the Amiga, which ranges from MK1 to MK4, including the ISA card that is supported through Amithlon and possibly other emulators. Older versions of multidisk.device are not required in any configuration.
manuals
The printed manual for Catweasel MK2 deals with the Amiga drivers only. Please note that usage is very similar for emulator use, so you might want to read these manuals as well if you install the ISA Catweasel in an Amithlon system, or if you use the Catweasel MK4(plus) in (win-)UAE. Please note that the title page was created with other software and could not be exported to the PDF files provided here.
english manuals
for Catweasel MK2 (1997): File:Catweasel MK2 Manual 1997.pdf
for Catweasel MK2 anniversary edition (2006): File:CWMK2anniversary Manual 2006.pdf
German manuals
for Catweasel MK2 (1998): File:Catweasel MK2 Handbuch 1998.pdf
for Catweasel MK2 anniversary edition (2006): File:CWMK2anniversary Handbuch 2006.pdf
installation picture
There's two ways for connecting the Catweasel MK2: In the A1200, it fits to the clock-port. That's the small 22-pin header located between the Kickstart Roms and the memory chips. The function of a real-time clock located on an accelerator board or a memory board is not harmed.
In the A4000, the Catweasel MK2 is connected to the internal IDE port. Again, the function of the IDE port is not harmed in any way: The pass-through of the Catweasel can still be used to connect two IDE devices: One master and one slave. When connected to the A1200 clock-port, the local expansion port is also activated. This port is meant for the Silversurfer Limited Edition.
One of the most common mistakes during installation is the orientation of the clockport cable. Please refer to the picture on the right for proper orientation of the cable. Make sure that you've hit both rows of the clockport header, and do not shift the cable into any direction. Wrong installation can cause severe damage to both the controller and the computer. Defects like this are not covered by warranty.
