ID #3286

Individual Computers: Catweasel

Connection: Clock Port, IDE, Zorro II

A1200 Version
A1200 Version

The catweasel clock port adaptor for connecting it to the clockport in the A1200
The catweasel clock port adaptor for connecting it to the clockport in the A1200

Catweasel Zorro II version
Catweasel Zorro II version

There are two main versions of the Catweasel, the A1200 version which is designed to connect to the clock port of the A1200, or in the A4000 it connects to the internal IDE port with a pass-thru for hard drives. The second version is a Zorro II card. The Catweasel is a floppy drive controller for the Amiga that allows the use of up to two cheap PC floppy drives, (both 5.25", 3.5" DD and HD) for reading Amiga and PC disks aswell as many other disk formats. You cannot however boot from the floppy drives. The controller also contains sophisticated algorithms to help read failing, sensitive or corrupted disks. Reading PC formatted disks is 2.15 times faster than using a native drive, and Amiga formatted disks are 1.3 times faster. The device also supports the use of floppy controller based tape drives, with a thru-put of up to 2MB/sec. It does not support DMA, but contains a local expansion port for adding additional expansions.

Supported File Systems

Platform File Systems
Amiga OFS
OFS International
FFS
FFS International
Apple IIe DOS 3.3 (and newer)
Apple Macintosh HFS
Atari 800XL Atari 800XL formatted.
Atari ST ST DOS
C64 DOS 2A
PC FAT12
FAT16
VFAT12
VFAT16

Supported Disk Types

Platform Disk Type
Amiga 3.5" DS, 880K
3.5" DS, 1.76MB
5.25" DS, 880K
5.25" DS, 1.76MB
Apple IIe 5.25" ?
Apple Macintosh 3.5" SS, 400K
3.5" DS, 720K
3.5" DS, 800K
3.5" DS, 1.44MB
Atari 800XL 5.25" ?
Atari ST 3.5" DS, 720K
3.5" DS, 800K
3.5" DS, 1.44MB
C64 (CBM 1541) 5.25" SS, 170K
(CBM 1571) 5.25" SS, 170K
(CBM 1571) 5.25" DS, 341K
(CBM 1581) 3.5" DS, 800K
Catweasel Extra 3.5" DS, 1.16MB
3.5" DS, 2.38MB
Nintendo Backup Station 1.6MB
PC 3.5" DS, 720K
3.5" DS, 1.44MB
5.25" DS, 360K
5.25" DS, 720K
5.25" DS, 800K
5.25" DS, 1.2MB

SS = Single Sided
DS = Double Sided

Contributions to this page by:
Alan Yau, Iggy Drougge, Jürgen Weiß, Michael Dittmar

Letzte Änderung des Artikels: 2009-01-25 18:13
Revision: 1.0

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