Catweasel MK3/MK4 Beta-Treiber V2.1.0.0 für Windows 2000/XP

Es gibt 3 Antworten in diesem Thema, welches 4.788 mal aufgerufen wurde. Der letzte Beitrag (14. Dezember 2006 um 03:37) ist von sauhund.

  • Hallo,

    Bitte melde dich an, um diesen Link zu sehen. findet ihr den neuen öffentlichen Beta-Treiber (V 2.1.0.0) für die Catweasel-Controller MK3/MK4 für Windows 2000/XP.

    Download Bitte melde dich an, um diesen Link zu sehen.

    Readme.txt:

    ---cut---

    Catweasel MK3 and MK4 software update V 2.1.0.0
    -----------------------------------------------
    (Catweasel ISA code is not removed, please report if you have a system where you can test this!)

    short:
    - 40-track drive support added
    - 300RPM drive support added
    - Amiga-write routines debugged
    - floppy drive compatibility improved by hardware/FPGA upgrade
    - middle/right mousebutton issue resolved by hardware/FPGA upgrade

    long:

    If you still have an old Catweasel driver installed, you have to remove it manually before installing this one:

    The driver directory for Win2000 is (drive letter):\WINNT\system32\drivers
    The driver directlry for Win XP is (drive letter):\windows\system32\drivers

    For WinXP, it will be necessary to switch off some safety measures, otherwise you cannot delete the files. You might be successful by doing an un-install with the software/PnP manager, but updating the driver with the PnP manager is not possible. We haven't found a possibility to "tell" the PnP manager to actually replace the old with the new files. If you're trying it, it will report a successful update, but will leave the old files in place.

    Delete the following files:

    catwea2k.sys [base driver]
    catdri2k.sys [floppy drive driver]
    catkey2k.sys [Amiga keyboard driver]
    catsid2k.sys [SID chip driver]
    catjoy2k.sys [Joystick driver] (note: currently unused, you most probably do not have this file installed.)

    You might not find all of these files in your driver directory, depending on the used options of the controller.

    Before installing the new driver, make sure to make a hard-reset. Either push the reset button at the right time (experts only), or shut down the computer completely and make a fresh power-up before you start installation. This will ensure proper reset of the MK4 hardware.

    IMPORTANT NOTICE: Other than mentioned in the manual, Win 9x and Win ME drivers are no longer supported. If you still have one of those old systems, now is the time to upgrade. Developing drivers for systems that are not real 32-bit systems is way too expensive (time- and moneywise). We do like legacy computers, but not legacy stuff that should have been avoided.

    This Update adresses the problems that people reported with writing Amiga Disks (again, and finally we hope). We did a lot of testing and investigation regarding this topic, and it works stable on all our systems now. The other major addition is the support of everything needed to use the controller with 360K 5.25" (40 Tracks) Drives (read notes on the imagetool below).

    If you find a bug, please consult the "how to report bugs" textfile and gather as much information as possible, thanks a lot!

    ReactOS.org people: Please contact us for driver compatibility with your operating system!

    Developers: We'll publish some example sources on how to use the new functions, such as activating/deactivating the floppy-passthrough ("Kylwalda"), how to add new formats to the imagetool and so on. However, testing the new driver framework of this public beta release has priority at the moment, and it might be necessary to shuffle some things around before we can finalize the API.

    There's still a lot of to-do's. If you continue to have problems writing Amiga disks, please check that you're really using DD disks (or at least put Scotch tape over the HD-hole), and of course to use good floppy drives: We recommend Teac (not Teac OEM, for example with integrated flashcard readers!), but Panasonic, Sanyo, Matsushita, Nec, Sony, Chinon, and most other brands also work fine.

    Three drives are known to be incompatible with the Catweasel line of controllers:

    Mitsumi D359 series ("Newtronics", bad head alignment on brand new drives, interface flaws)
    Teac drives with integrated flashcard reader (also made by Mitsumi)
    Citizen floppy drives as used in Compaq computers (interface flaws)

    Incase you have problems writing DD disks, please make sure that your drive is actually DD capable (one possibility to identify a non DD capable drive is to look into the slot, you should see the switch for the DD hole on the right side). Known problematic Drives are:

    Samsung SFD-321B (missing DD switch, verifying written DD disks will fail, although written disk will work in most cases (in a real Amiga for example))

    Another loose end is power-saving and suspend mode functions. These Windows functions are hardly documented anywhere. Most books have paragraphs like "there is something like that, and it's very difficult to debug". True, especially without documentation about parameters of calling functions. If you have hints on where to find proper literature on this, your help is greatly appreciated. For now, all difficulties you might have experienced when shutting the computer down are solved, but suspend has to stay on the todo-list for now.

    WinUAE support is very high on the list: The right/middle mouse button issue has been addressed in this update, and we also prepared the "true df0: emulation" in the driver. However, please report back if all known bugs are removed now, then we'll move on to adding new features.

    Now put the driver to the test: Do all kinds of things that we might not have thought about and report back if you find a fault. If you see a so-called "bluescreen", please take the time to write down all numbers, it really helps us to find the cause. Also read the "how to report bugs" textfile in this archive. It'll save us all a lot of work.

    Notes on the Imagetool:

    To support reading 5.25" disks using all kinds of drives the following options where added:

    double Step (default: enabled)
    - this must be disabled to read 40 Tracks format (such as C64 disks) on 40 Tracks drives. Since it is impossible to detect the kind of drive which is connected via hardware, make sure to set this correctly when using 40 Tracks drive, the drive may go out of alignment or even get permanently damaged when trying to step too far.

    ignore Diskchange (default: disabled)
    - most 40 Track drives either do not generate the "disk change" signal at all, or use the "disk change" line for the "ready" signal. Enable this option if your drive behaves funny, for example a "no disk in drive" is reported as soon as the imagetool wants to start reading. Proper support for the "ready" signal will be implemented later (needs further investigation and testing).

    300 RPM Timing (default: disabled)
    - most 40 Track drives run at 300rpm (and not 360rpm like 80 Track drives), so if you are using one, you most probably need to enable this aswell.

    analog Reader PLL / digital Reader PLL (default: analog Reader PLL)
    - this is a toggle switch (only one can be enabled). it toggles between two different concepts of interpreting the data from the disk. "analog Reader PLL" tries to modell the exact behaviour of actual diskdrive hardware, while "digital Reader PLL" takes a more pragmatic digital route. Each method has its ups and downs, so if you have a certain problematic disk that you can not read using the "analog Reader PLL", try the "digital Reader PLL".

    Note on using 40 Track drives:

    during developing the required features (and testing them) we noticed that 40 Track drives seem to be a little bit problematic, so keep the following hints in mind:

    - most of these drives can not not simply connected to any floppy controller without further configuration (usually by setting jumpers). There is a lot that can go wrong here, and unfortunatly it is hard to give a general advice on configuration. if nothing works, there is a high chance that the drives jumper settings are simply wrong, play with them!

    - start with having only the 40 Track drive connected to the catweasel and make it work first, then connect a second drive and do further testing (sometimes the 40 track drives confuse the other drive, which might again be caused by the wrong jumper settings).

    Notes on the hardware/FPGA upgrades:

    If a Catweasel MK4 is detected, a new FPGA program (also called "core") will be uploaded. This is not a sensitive operation such as re-flashing a mainboard, because FPGA-chips are not flash-based, but ram-based. Think of it as writing data to memory, it is something that can be done millions of times without wearing out the hardware. You do not have to open your computer or set a jumper to install the hardware upgrade. The MK4 has a re-configurable architecture that allows the driver to do hardware changes on the fly.

    It was reported that using an Amiga mouse in UAE caused "phantom presses" of the middle and right mouse button. This has been resolved by adding pullup-resistors to the corresponding FPGA lines. Another upgrade has been made on the floppy write-timing: While writing Amiga disks was possible with older Teac drives, the new Teac drives and HD-only drives did not write DD disks properly with the old hardware/FPGA revision. The new FPGA core resolves this problem and even lets you write Amiga-DD disks with HD-only drives like the Samsung SFD-321B. You cannot read Amiga-disks in such a drive, but writing those disks is mostly possible. However, we suggest to double-check if a diskdrive is a true dual-mode drive by taking a close look at the slot where you insert the disk. You should see three switches: One for the HD-hole of the disk, another for the write-protect slider, and the third is a presence-detect switch. Only if these three switches are present, the drive is a dual-mode drive.

    greetings,
    Tobias and Jens

    ---cut---

    ams

  • Sehr geile Sache. Danke für die Infos!

    Dann tut sich ja auf diesem Sektor immer mal wieder was. Schön zu lesen.

    Ex-Admin&Mod Forum64, Ex-Orga DoReCo
    Please check out my remixes at: Bitte melde dich an, um diesen Link zu sehen. and Bitte melde dich an, um diesen Link zu sehen. and leave a vote! Thx! :)

  • hm. mein CW3, hat der jetzt die bugs des cw4 oder nicht? d.h. ich brauche die updates des fpga nicht, oder ich habe nichts davon und kann einen cw4 kaufen gehn?

    Code: Floppy Fehlerkanal abfragen - Ausserdem kann ich bei "drive not ready" den I: und N: Befehl verwenden und notfalls den Kopf manuell zurückschieben. Und Finger weg vom Stepper!
    10 open1,8,15                   : rem 8 ist die Geräteadresse und das kann man bei Bedarf natürlich anpassen
    20 get#1,a$:?a$;:ifst<>64goto20 : rem Das CLOSE 1 am Ende kann man sich sparen, weil beim RUN automatisch ein CLOSE ALL ausgeführt wird.
    RUN
  • Zitat

    hm. mein CW3, hat der jetzt die bugs des cw4 oder nicht?

    natürlich nicht =) (von eventuellen fixes im treiber profitierst du natürlich trotzdem)