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Hardware

All-In-One Interface For All Your Retro/Legacy Drives 282

Posted by timothy from the nice-weasel-niiiice-weasel dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Individual computers have announced a new version of they're multi-format floppy controller the Cat Weasel. This new version (Catweasel MK3 PCI/Flipper) has a few surprises such as 3 different interfaces to connect it to the host computer and a socket for an original C64 SID chip :). 'The main purpose of the Catweasel has always been to allow access to non-standard disks using normal PC-disk drives, even if you usually need a completely different computer for that. The capacity of the drive does not matter in this case: A 5.25 inch drive with 1.2MByte capacity will read and write a C-64 disk with 170KByte as well as a 3.5 inch drive with 1.44MByte can access a 1,76MByte Amiga disk. Together with a company that has specialized in data recovery, we're working on the implementation of more than 1100 different disk formats, and it does not matter that this has been classified impossible by others before. Even the 800KByte disks from older Macintosh computers can be used in standard 1.44MB drives, although the original drives have rotated their disks at variable speeds.' Find out more at the Catweasel MK3 PCI/Flipper page."
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All-In-One Interface For All Your Retro/Legacy Drives More

All-In-One Interface For All Your Retro/Legacy Drives

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  • Filesystem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trusty Penfold ( 615679 ) <jon_edwards@spanners4us.com> on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:23PM (#4552626) Journal

    It's all very well the drive being able to read the data. Where do I get the 1100 filesystems needed to interpret it?

    • Re:Filesystem? (Score:2, Informative)

      by shird ( 566377 )
      Like the other poster said, you could use something like VMWare to make use of it. Otherwise, if you can run Linux or something on the 'other' machine, you could format the media to ext3/FAT or some other filesystem Linux has support for, which allows you to shift files between different systems supporting Linux/Other OS without a network.

    • Re:Filesystem? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by StillAnonymous ( 595680 )
      I'd just be happy with them updating the DOS drivers on the original ISA Catweasel to handle WRITING to the disks. These drivers have been ignored ever since they were developed.

      The only writing you'll get with the PC version is under Linux for Amiga, MSDOS, and TRS-80 formats.
  • I don't even have a floppy on my computer, funny I never thought I could survive without the things. I got rid of 500 to 1000 5 1/4s about 5 years ago, and just got rid of most of my 3 1/2s just recently.

    Buy sweet Macintosh Apples, they taste good and go down easy (look good too).
    • I keep my floppy drive for 3 reasons

      1)hardware that only gives drivers on floppys (common with network cards)

      2)WinXP requires the drivers for my raid to be in the A drive in order to install windows

      3)Linux boot disks for when something happens to my boot sector (aka windows install)
      • Well, I have answers to all three....

        1) burn these to a cd

        2) You don't have to throw out all your floppies (i have no 5 1/4s left (let alone a drive for it) and I have less than 30 other floppies left (my father still uses the PC that I have upgraded about 3 times over the last decade)

        3) Your install cd could help here (last time I tried to uncompress the kernel from a floppy it took forever)

  • Since when... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SerialHistorian ( 565638 )
    Since when did Slashdot start posting free advertisements from corporations .. I mean, anonymous readers, for the corporation's product... ?

  • Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:26PM (#4552640) Homepage
    While the windows drivers are a given, I think it's interesting that companies like this will provide linux drivers and support, but no Mac drivers or support. [jschoenfeld.de] The Mac desktop market is significantly larger than the linux desktop market, so it's not a marketshare issue.

    But then, I guess Mac users are used to just throwing their computers away when it's upgrade time, and buying another one that "just works" (until new hardware comes out).

    • Re:Interesting (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by jpt.d ( 444929 )
      Macs tend to last twice as long as PCs for functionality (wait and see with the new OSX though). The resale value for a mac is significantly higher than a Windows PC.

      Maybe Macs are better?

      • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

        by StillAnonymous ( 595680 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @10:25PM (#4552936)
        I'd reason that Macs "last longer" (meaning people keep them longer than they would a PC) is due to three main factors:

        1) Apple doesn't develop hardware as fast as the x86 crew does. You hear about new and faster CPUs and motherboards for PC platform every two weeks (or so it seems). And people always seem want something faster, whether they need it or not.

        2) The gaming industry pushes obsolesence more than any other. Since PCs are the primary platform for games, people are always upgrading their PCs to take advantage of the newest UT2010, Quake 5, and the like.

        3) It's cheaper to upgrade a PC (do you consider it 'keeping the computer' if you replaced the MB and CPU?)

        As far as resale value goes, if an object has a higher initial price, it almost goes without saying that it's resale value will be higher as well. Especially given point #1 above. A year down the road, that 1GHz Mac still isn't that much slower than the latest Mac available. But with a PC, one year means a LOT of progress in the hardware market.
    • have you thought.. maybe their controller doesn't work with macs?
    • The Mac desktop market is significantly larger than the linux desktop market, so it's not a marketshare issue.

      Can you back up that claim with some facts? And even if it's true, what fractions of the two markets are actually "hacker" types who would be interested in such a product?

  • Apple ][ Forever ! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:28PM (#4552649)
    Oh wait, they weren't mentioned. ;-)

    Does anyone know if this will read Apple ][ disks?

    Speaking of reading Apple disks, anyone still got a working Copy II PC board laying around?

    Cheers

  • This is a Better way to deal with legacy devices (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CathedralRulz ( 566696 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:28PM (#4552651)
    Working in a Windows world and being a developer myself, I'm convinced that one of the biggest reasons for instability and issues holding back OS advancement (maybe for may as well as Win) is having to deal with legacy devices, software, and data formats.

    Ideally, OS and even software developers would look at the latest technology out there and design for that, and then work out legacy issues; the currently seem to do it the other way around.

    Development of device like these may help change that because it demonstrates the possibility for developers to look forward first and perhaps outsource the looking back.

  • Wow.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux.gmail@com> on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:30PM (#4552661)
    talk about specialize. More power to them. But I wonder if they can sell many of these. I mean, except for a few data recovery people, I don't see any real use for this. You need SCSI for your system, you get SCSI...you need IDE, you do IDE...change filesystems, stick it on a distant server tar-red up, then transfer it back down.

    Just my $.02

    JoeLinux

    • Re:Amiga crowd? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @10:21PM (#4552918)
      I know a lot of people who are seriously dedicated to the Amiga, and still use their Amigas to this day. I understand there are even more Amiga users in Europe (I'm in the USA).

      Look at all tha Amiga-specific features - you can plug this thing into a PC or an Amiga (apparently it has an ISA connector along one edge and a Zorro connector on the other), you can plug an Amiga keyboard into it, etc. etc.

  • Damn, no Apple ][ interface! (Score:4, Funny)

    by bugnuts ( 94678 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:32PM (#4552679) Journal
    What am I going to do with that HUGE BOX OF WAREZ?! :-)

  • Commodore 64 drives? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sacarino ( 619753 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:35PM (#4552700) Homepage
    Come on... I mean, I have a C64 sitting in the closet, right next to my C128 and my ol' Atari. I even have a working TRaSh-80. I keep them because I loved them back in the day and I don't want to toss them.

    It's called memorabilia. As in "something worthy of rememberance." How big do they think a market for this will be? I don't even think you'd find enough consumers to call it a niche market.... please correct me if I'm wrong.
    • Pretty big. MorphOS users need one, it works in a real Amiga, UAE users need one, Amithlon users need one, AmigaONE users need one, there's a huge market for it, people have been SCREAMING for a PCI catweasel for a while, to replace the ISA one that's been available for years.

      It's about time they succomed to the demand, seriously. I'm ordering 3, one for my Amiga, one for my x86 Amithlon box, and one for my AmigaONE/PPC. (once I get the AmigaONE)
    • Speaking of Commodore 64 drives, I still have one in my basement. I'm guessing it was the only floppy drive in history that was bigger, heavier and sported more CPU horsepower than the computer it attached to. (IIRC, it had its very own 6502).

      Despite this, for some unknown reason, it was at least an order of magnitude slower than comparable PC drives. I had to pay good money for an aftermarket ROM cartridge that had no function other than speed up the floppy interface by 5X by fixing the serial communication protocol.

      That drive is just about the finest example of overdesigned hardware I've ever seen.

  • Just look at the name! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:35PM (#4552701)
    With a name like "Catweasel" it has to be good.

  • holding out (Score:5, Funny)

    by brer_rabbit ( 195413 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:35PM (#4552702) Journal
    I'm holding out til it can read punch cards. My Univac warez can only get better with age.

  • Better sooner than later (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SexyKellyOsbourne ( 606860 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:41PM (#4552726) Journal
    One of the problems with some of NASA's old data from the 1960-80's is that they used strange disk formats to store what was then a whopping amount of data -- 800x600x32 pictures and such -- that used structures that were created by programmers who took their secrets to the grave.

    There is still much important data and creative work lurking on ancient disks that were never transferred to much more standard formats (CD) -- kudos to them for creating such an interface before some of it becomes forever lost.
    • The big question is whether the data for which source code still exists will survive long enough to get transferred. A lot of data came from grad students or other "low priority" sources. Further there isn't typically the money to convert all the gigabytes of astronomical data over the last few decades.

      I've not kept up with recent advances, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of data being recorded even today disappears. Part of the problem is information overload and no good centralized way of organizing it. (Unless things have changed the last couple of years - I hope it has)

      The sad thing about all this is how often old data leads to new information. Many important discoveries still come from old records of motions from back in the 19th century.

    • Re:Better sooner than later (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jerronimo ( 13945 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @11:07PM (#4553084)
      You're thinking that NASA technology is a lot further along than it really is. It's not.

      Most of that data is on 9-track tapes... and on top of that, they're degraded to the point that they're useless at this point. You won't be able to read the media due to it coming off of its backing and such...

      even if it were good, you will need replacement heads for the tape drives due to wear from all of the tapes, and there aren't enough of those around anymore.

      The result; rooms and rooms full of useless mag tapes. (I'm not making this stuff up.)
      • The result; rooms and rooms full of useless mag tapes. (I'm not making this stuff up.)

        It's not all bad news. Most of those useless mag tapes have useless data on them anyway. If the data is truly valuable then it is actively used in an accessible format.

        There might be some lossage when the tapes are finally chucked, but I'm betting it will not even be a fraction of a percent of the total storage on those tapes.

      • You can get replacement heads for many of the old tape drives. Just be prepared for a heart attack when you get the price quote.
      • I wonder why some of these organizations don't outsource the data recovery to experts like Google. Google was able to recover 20 years of Usenet from decayed magtapes in different esoteric formats; wouldn't they be able to do the same for NASA?

  • Interesting, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trekologer ( 86619 ) <adb@@@trekologer...net> on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:42PM (#4552735) Homepage
    While this is a very interesting product and an idea that is past its time for release, its just that: past its time. Being able to read C64 or 400/800k Mac discs on your PC might have been useful in, say, 1992. But today... 10 years later, if you haven't gotten your data off those forms of media, you obviously didn't need it to begin with. Sure, it might be nice to see what you wrote back in 1985 but if it was really that important, wouldn't you have found a way to get to it by now?
    • Being able to read C64 or 400/800k Mac discs on your PC might have been useful in, say, 1992. But today... 10 years later, if you haven't gotten your data off those forms of media, you obviously didn't need it to begin with.

      Well, there's "need," and there's "hey cool, I can slurp in that box of old floppies." I'm too lazy to rig up a null modem connection, especially now that I don't have any serial ports on my machine... ;)

      I mean, I'd love one of these. And yes, I checked a few floppies on the original hardware last year, and they're <plbbbt!> still fresh.

      Hack on,

  • Now you'll know (Score:5, Funny)

    by NevarMore ( 248971 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:45PM (#4552753) Homepage Journal
    This is a cool device. Now Ill be able to confirm that my 5-25 year old floppies are blank and corrupted.
    • You know, I've only ever had a handfull of bad 5.25" disks, I couldn't belive it this summer when I installed monkey island off my original 5.25" disks, 12 years after I bought them.

      3.5" disks however ... I'm sure I've thrown away hundreds of bad disks, and forget about any of my old videogames working. I'm convinced that 3.5" disks have some kind of design defect that prevents them from being reliable.

  • In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by CySurflex ( 564206 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:46PM (#4552756)
    Some company in Kansas just anounced that they are patenting a new type of ball bearing that works for horse carriages that haven't been built sinced 1802, for prarie wagons that were last manufactured in 1850, for cars from 1950 and 1951 and for a type of bicycle that was never produced but some guy had a prototype in 1933.

    • Re:In other news.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by SparkyMartin ( 206236 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @11:35PM (#4553188)
      Alot of 'ball bearings' in 1802 were a steel shaft thru a piece of wood. As the shaft rotated the friction would heat the wood but smooth it out, and with use it would become almost as smooth as glass, producing almost no friction between the two parts. The side effect was that by the time the wood became extremely smooth it wore down and compressed away from the joint, leaving alot of play.


      These wooden bearings were actually used up to the 50's or 60's on alot of machinery, and maybe even used today. I just remember seeing these on alot of old farm machinery when I was growing up. And they actually outlasted metal bearings by a long shot, sometimes oulasting the machine itself.


      I'm not sure why I wrote that.

  • I can confirm... (Score:5, Informative)

    by CaptainPotato ( 191411 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:56PM (#4552804) Homepage
    ...that this product is well worth it (well, the older ISA version is) - I do not have anything to do with Individual Computers, before anybody suggests it, other than as a satisfied customer. Aside from the usual emulation benefit (running UAE and having access to real Amiga floppies is a godsend), the matter of copying data off old floppies to one's latest system is a pretty important one. Perhaps I am unusual in this regard (I doubt it) - I have hundreds of old disks lying around, with no machine set up (or even in a cupboard) to access them. Even with such a machine, there is still the issue of copying the data over to the new machine: if the old one is not network connected (local or Internet), it is certainly fun and games in trying to achieve this...

    It is probably also worth mentioning that the build quality on products from Individual Computers is fantastic, and I speak as one who has used a few of them. If the new card is up to the usual high standard, it will be well worth the purchase.

    Finally, the new card is (for me, at least) interesting, as one edge has a PCI connector and the other an Amiga Zorro slot connector. No doubt there are other multiple connector cards in existence, but the idea is new to me :)

  • What c64 emulator can use that SID chip? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kobotronic ( 240246 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @09:58PM (#4552813)
    Pretty cool product idea. If I owned a 'box' (and didn't exclusively use a laptop for everything I do,) I'd definitely buy one of those things and go find a 5.25" drive at a garage sale or something. I have a couple shoeboxes full of C64 floppies that I'd like to read again - my venerable 1541 died a decade ago. I made a bunch of crappy graphics and compilation floppies of my then-favorite games - considering what else, retro-computing related stuff I've purchased over the years, a controller board like this is small change. I wish the manufacturer luck in finding a market, but I agree that it probably going to be a very tight niche.

    About the SID chip socket. Which c64 emulators can use that? CCS64 can use HARDSID (I think), but can it use a SID chip on the Catweasel MK3 socket? I think the "Individual Computers" webmasters would do well to print a bit more specific information, as well as a complete list of compatible file formats. (I have another couple shoeboxes fulla ancient CP/M floppies that I'd like to salvage also!)

    • Re:What c64 emulator can use that SID chip? (Score:5, Informative)

      by eap ( 91469 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @10:14PM (#4552882) Journal
      You can pick up 1541's relatively cheaply on ebay. I just got one for $14, and I have seen them go for as low as $8. The shipping is usually more than the drive itself b/c they weigh 14 lbs. There is lots of info on transferring data between C64's and PC's, including schematics for building a cable to connect your 1541 to your PC, located here [c64.org].

      There is a program called VC1541 that I have not tried which will supposedly allow your PC to emulate a 1541. This will not allow you to read C64 disks in your PC 5.25 floppy though.

      Does anyone know where you can still buy new 5.25" disks?

  • Sweet (Score:5, Funny)

    by florin ( 2243 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @10:07PM (#4552852)
    I can't even carry a floppy halfways across a room between two drives that are supposed to work with the same filesystem without seeing my data eaten by bad sectors, and now my PC can ruin my old 8-bit collection too. What a deal.

  • I need something that can accomodate 8 inches... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by weave ( 48069 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @10:12PM (#4552873) Journal
    Sigh, I have a lot of my very first coding (in Z80 assembly) stored on 8" floppies, CP/M format. I'd really like to get those text files transferred off of them. What a rush it would be (if they are still readable that is. It *has* been 20 years...

    Those puppies held something like 160K and cost $5.00 (in 1980 dollars) a piece.

  • I dunno.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Soko ( 17987 )
    Acees old data hunh?

    [rons@localhost rons]$ cat weasel
    cat: weasel: No such file or directory
    [rons@localhost rons]$

    Maybe it just needs a good driver. Otherwise, I doubt it will live up to it's purpose...

    Soko
  • is filth!
    No, not pr0n, filth as in mould and other miscellaneous cruft.

    I hope these guys also provide something to clean the media! Otherwise there are folk who are going to fork out big bucks for this widget only to find that the huge stack of old floppies they were hoping to be able to read are useless! due to mould!! and stuff!!!
  • Work (sub rosa) to put together a package of emulators for all the machines your product supports (or as many as you can find), make 'em compatible with your hardware, and have it put up on a server outside the US. Spread word about the package surreptitiously. It'll be an enormous help for driving sales.

  • The real catweazle (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @10:22PM (#4552922)
    For those who don't know, the real Catweazle was a very eccentric British TV [davecov.com] show of the early 1970s. A children's cult classic and no mistake.

  • Jens (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @10:25PM (#4552934) Homepage Journal
    I bought the "Catweasel with Buddha" (Zorro II version for use in an Amiga) a few years ago, and one thing I found out about this company is that they support their products. There was some weird conflict between that board and my Picasso IV, and Jens himself answered my email and got me through it. His helpfulness led to me buying more of his stuff.

    Take a look at his array of products, and you can't help noticing: the guy is a hardware hacker who just loves making boards of all types for doing -- whatever.

  • Will it read Laser / VZ disks? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @10:27PM (#4552939) Journal
    Small intro: The VZ was a Z80 based computer sold around the world, under many names. VZ in Australia, Laser in Germany, and also known as "Texet" and "Salora Fellow" IIRC.
    We on the vzemu mailing list have been tossing around ideas on how to get the old VZ games up and running on the PC. There's more than one emulator but we could use some more software. We have copied some of the stuff over using some pretty weird processes (like manually typing in memory dumps) but we could use something better. Since these guys are german, who knows?
    Shameless plug:
    If there's anyone even remotely interested in this machine we would LOVE to have you on the mailing list since the active members are currently very few, and for a machine that was sold to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, only having 5 or 6 ppl interested in its emulation strikes us as a bit odd.
    Anyway you can subscribe by sending a blank email to vzemu-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
    I better go and post a link on the mailing list now! :)

  • SID emulation (Score:4, Funny)

    by chriso11 ( 254041 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @10:32PM (#4552955) Journal
    Wow. Neat piece of hardware. But why put the SID circuit on it? A SB Live has superior performance and can pretend to be a better SID than the SID ever was.

    If you really need that level of hardware support, put a 6502 on the board, and run that too. Hey, why stop there - put the 64KByte of memory (use some left over 486 cache memory), and hell, put the composite output driver for those who REALLY need the whole 80's experience. Oh, and some acid washed jeans too.

    • Actually... (Score:2, Informative)

      by locutox__ ( 167539 )
      The SB Live (like the one in my pc) cannot pretend to be a better chip then a real one. Take these samples, recorded from two real sid chips:

      http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~johnt/temp/mech3.wav .mp3
      http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~johnt/temp/r1-mech3. wav.mp3

      and compare it to the latest SID emulator (be it LittleSID 2, sidplay2, etc.) They dont come close to emulating real filter saturation as you can hear from the two mp3s. The mp3s also make it easy to realise why people say 'every chip sounds different' as these two chips definitely do.

      Here's the link for the sid tune to load into an emulator:
      http://gallium.prg.dtu.dk/HVSC/C64Music /Mueller_Markus/Mechanicus.sid

      And here's the best emulator to date, http://sidplay2.sourceforge.net/
    • A SB Live...can pretend to be a better SID than the SID ever was.

      It most definitely can't. The SID was, and is, a masterpiece of a chip. The main reason that it is impossible to emulate well is its analog filters.

      That's why gear like the SIDStation [sidstation.com] exists - it's a professional music tool to get analog synth sounds that the current digital tools just lack.

      Cheers,
      Ian

      (Oh - for proof? Try listening to Ghost and Goblins on a real SID, then on an emulator. They have never got it right)

  • I had a sour experience with Individual/Catweasel (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blakespot ( 213991 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @11:10PM (#4553098) Homepage
    I had an Amiga 1200 (060 50MHz, towered) that I was trying to use a PC drive with. (Sold the Amiga to fund the purchase of an iBook 700 recently...) I purchased a Catweasel for the Amiga and could never get it working properly. The reason I went this route is that I was under the impression that the floppy in the A1200 was configured such that certain software would not run on the machine. (It was a very recent A1200, do a google search to find out what I'm talking about).

    Anyway, I was talking with the main guy behind the Catweasel (can't recall his name right off) via e-mail and giving him my situation and photos of different parts of my mobo and he was walking me through the process of getting the drive wired properly w/ the Catweasel, etc. but it was not working. Turns out he had incorrect information regarding the configuration of these late-model A1200's and that my whole wiring, soldering, and Catweasel experience was for naught. As this was being discovered, the guy got tired of going through the back and forth in trying to get Catweasel working on my Amiga, and stopped responding to me.

    Left a sour taste. Wasted $$. I'm sure most people won't have this need for support or this less than ideal experience. My $.02.

    blakespot
  • I've still got some data on those I'd like to get off... -dB

  • Fred Cisin did this years ago with XenoCopy. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Brett Glass ( 98525 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @11:41PM (#4553211) Homepage
    It's capable of reading more than 400 formats [xenosoft.com]. (About the only thing it couldn't read was Apple IWM disks, which use group code recording.) A brilliant piece of work.
  • The swedish(?) company Elecktron makes a gadget called the SIDstation [sidstation.com] based around the c64 SID chip. It's intended for use in electronic music.
  • I wonder if it will read the Altos 5 1/4in floppies? How about my old Vector Graphics hard sectored floppies?

  • All right! It's finally here! Screw Windows 2000 and Linux, I'm going back to using GEOS [zimmers.net]!!!
  • that this 'cat weasel' also has a 'spellchecker' (or better, 'grammar tutor' option)? I don't mean to flame, but reading "they're" instead of their makes me totally cringe...
  • Literally three minutes before this was posted, I bought a 1541 on EBay to begin converting my old C64 disks...


    'Course, I only paid $10.50, so I guess it's not that big a deal. :)

  • Software Tool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikeboone ( 163222 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @12:39AM (#4553500) Homepage Journal
    Well, it won't do C64 disks, but in the past week, I've found this awesome software tool to help me get access to my old Amiga disks on my PC. It's called DISK2FDI, and uses a neat floppy controller trick to read Amiga disks using regular PC floppy drives, all through software. You do need 2 drives for it to work, though, but it works great making .ADF files that UAE can use.

    http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/ [oldskool.org]
  • "They're multi-format floppy controller"?

    This is getting towards the point where I can't fscking read the article because of grammatical errors!

    Is it really that hard to write the most basic English? Even if you've spoken it all your life?

  • How about service to do this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by btempleton ( 149110 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:38AM (#4553874) Homepage
    What I really want is for somebody to get a bank of these, and some cheap labour (teenagers or overseas or whatever) to just slot floppies into them. With a nice program that would read the floppy, figure out what type it was, and copy it to hard disk.

    I would love to be able to ship my many hundreds of old floppies off to such a service and get back some CDs with all the data. Duplicates removed, ideally.

    There are probably business services which will do this for dollars a floppy, which is too high, but if all you need is a teenager who can insert 200 floppy disks an hour for $6/hour, you can do it cheap, and I would happily pay 50 cents/floppy to get that stuff read.

    I have a lot of formats though. Every type of PC floppy. Commodore PET and C64 disks. Atari 800 disks. Atari ST disks. Apple ][ disks. Disks hard written from Xenix with tar and cpio archives in 720K format as well as 1.2MB format. Lots and lots.

    Anybody going to start up such a service?

  • PS/2 Floppy Woes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @03:22AM (#4554005) Journal


    I sincerely hope that this new gadget will help me.

    You see, many, many moons ago, when I still have my hair, I used the IBM PS/2.

    One day, I bought a batch of SINGLE-SIDED 3.5" floppy, and formatted them in the PS/2 floppy drive.

    Instead of formatting the SINGLE-SIDED floppy diskettes as SINGLE-SIDED, the PS/2 machine formatted them as DOUBLE-SIDED.

    Now, the "still-have-full-head-of-hear" younger me didn't really care, and proceeded to store data on those diskettes.

    Okay ... let's go several years in the future.

    I wanted to get the data off those floppy disks, and was horrified to find that the disks were SINGLE-SIDED disks. And of course, ALL the non-PS/2 floppy drives refused to recognize those disks as DOUBLE-SIDED, and thus, I can't retrieve the data I stored on the disks.

    I did try to find old PS/2, hoping that I can retrieve the data from the disks. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any.

    So the disks languished, along with the data.

    Has anyone used the gadget ? Can anyone tell me if that gadget can turn any plain-vanilla 3.5" floppy drive into PS/2 floppy drive that treat single-sided disks as double sided ?

    Thanks for any help that you can give me.

    Thanks again !

    • The only thing that ID's a floppy as single sided is not having the extra hole in it (the one opposite the write protect tab), so either drill a hole in the single sided floppy in the right place (not recommended due to plastic swarf getting EVERYWHERE), or get a sacrificial floppy drive and somehow disable the switch that senses that hole.
  • Individual Computers is also organizing this year's big German Amiga fair [think42.com]. Next to the Catweasel MK3 PCI/Flipper board, new AmigaOne [osnews.com], Pegasos [osnews.com] and even a new ATX c64 successor motherboards, called the c-one [think42.com] will be sold at this fair!

    To see what last year's main German Amiga Fair was like, watch this [virtualdimension.de] great video coverage. The upcoming big German Amiga fair will be held on the 7th and 8th of December 2002 at the Eurogress [eurogress-aachen.de] in Aachen.

  • My Catweasel Experience - Lousy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DaveWood ( 101146 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @10:18AM (#4555325) Homepage
    I have a million old disks in a Babel of formats, and I bought a Catweasel several years ago from Jens and his friend Norbert. I believed all the hype, I was ready to start the months-long process of imaging all my disks onto PC before too many of their bits shifted and they became unreadable.

    The problem is that the Catweasel doesn't live up to its hype. Or at least the one I got.

    I had about a 90% failure rate across the board. 100% failure with 1581 disks. 75% with Amiga. 90% with 800k Mac disks. ~90% with 1541-style Commodore. Absolutely abyssmal. Their rudimentary software (un-abortable without forcing open the drive door while it was in operation) would dump a mountain of German error messages on me. I would then take the same disk to a real Commodore/Amiga/Mac and read it perfectly.

    I talked with them a bit about the problem. At their instructions, I tried different computers (4), different floppy drives (9), different floppy cables (5), all from different manufacturers, different speeds, and including a cable Jens himself said would work, etc... As you can see, I satisfied myself beyond all normal means that this was a problem with his card, and nothing else.

    Eventually I sent my card back to Jens, and a month or two later, I received the exact same card back in the mail. He "couldn't find the problem." However, I still had a useless card, and then they stopped answering my emails.

    The card did read a couple of disks - though not even reliably enough to make it a curiosity. This leads me to believe Jens is not a scam artist, and that he actually just still has (or had) some major bugs in his system. But not even trying to replace the card, and then just dropping me and keeping my (what was it? $50? $100?) money... He struck me as a hobbyist who'd gotten in over his head. So I'm very surprised to see him still in the business.

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