The Catweasel Controller Card 15/02/98

"How do I load Amiga disks on my PC," you ask. "You can't," we reply. "Unless," we add, tantalisingly, leaving a pause, "Unless you have a Catweasel card."

"What?"

We learned of the card's existance late last year and were thrilled when its makers, Buddha, kindly sent us one to review. The card itself is a standard ISA card that simply slots into your PC via expected methods and then attaches either to your A: drive, or a seperate drive dedicated to reading non-PC format disks, using the supplied connectors.

Our test model was carefully packaged in its own box, together with a standard ribbon connector and a driver disk. Unfortunately, no documentation was supplied - so we were very much on our own.

The first problem we encountered with the 'Weasel was when trying to attach it to the single free ISA slot in our test machine - it simply didn't fit. Removal of the metal plate was necessary, so a small saw was located and the panel was hacked off, effecting an eventual comfortable fit. We expect this was simply an oversight with our test 'Weasel and isn't really a tremendous problem.

Since our test PC contained only one floppy disk drive, we soon realised the error of our ways when coming to install the drivers - we couldn't. The Catweasel card takes complete control of your floppy drive, and since it bypasses the floppy controller, the PC's BIOS can no longer see it, therefore it's necessary to copy the contents of the drivers disk to the hard drive BEFORE the card is installed. This is not an issue if you have two floppy drives - simply connect the catweasel to your B: drive, and tell your BIOS that you only have one drive. Some re-jiggling later and we were booting into Windows 95 successfully with the card in place and the drivers on the hard drive.

Next, we located a variety of disks to test it with. It's worth remembering that the 'Weasel can read many different formats - including Mac and Commodore 64, but we only had Amiga floppies at our disposal and, so, gathered together a cross-section of different formats including OFS (Original File System), FFS (Fast File System), FFS with Directory Cache, and HD disks. We also included some original game disks including Rob Northen-style protected magazine cover disks.

We were ready to go. Dropping to a MS-DOS prompt, we perused the directory containing the Catweasel commands - of which there are many. It is possible to DIR the disk in the Catweasel drive, to read the entire contents to a file, to copy specific files, to delete, to move, to diagnose, etc. The first disk we read from was a (cracked) copy of 1988 shoot-em-up, Return To Genesis. This was a standard 880k OFS Amiga disk.

Invoked by a simple command line, CATREAD 0: C:\ADF\GENESIS.ADF, the 'Weasel then proceeded to read the disk, track by track, to a file on the HD named "Genesis.adf". Less than two minutes later, we were trying the newly created file in Fellow - it worked perfectly. The Catweasel is very intelligent and verbose (albeit in German) - it reports any errors it finds when reading the disk, and has a number of tries at reading difficult tracks. Next we tried a disk which contained Soundtracker modules. The disk was a standard Kickstart 2 FFS disk, reported by the 'Weasel as such when typing CATDIR 0:. We copied the file "BeyondSorrow.MOD" to the HD - the 'Weasel chugged for a while before completing the task - even keeping the long-filename intact.

So far, so good. It's unfortunate that the 'Weasel isn't integrated into the system in some way; the typing of specific DOS commands is a chore - but it does get the job done. Buddha tell us that there is planned support for the 'Weasel with Unix drivers for UAE, but it will be quite some time before this happens. Which is a shame. But nevermind, on with our next test.

The 'Weasel's first failure, in fact. A FFS-DC floppy disk from a recent Amiga magazine's cover. After chugging and making Amiga-type "gronk, gronk, gronk" noises, the card gave up and reported the disk as corrupt. Our A1200 read it perfectly first time, so clearly the disk was not at fault. Locating and testing another handful of FFS-DC disks confirmed that the Catweasel cannot handle this, more modern format.

Next we located one of the oldest disks we could find - dating from 1987, this was "The Very First", the original Amiga tutorial guide which was shipped with Kickstart 1.2 Amigas. It was an OFS disk, and the Catweasel both listed the directory of the disk, copied it and read it to a file with ease. Not bad for an 11-year-old floppy disk!

Another failure, but no real surprise. Using the commands available, we couldn't find a way to copy protected game disks - Stunt Car Racer, Rainbow Islands, Blood Money, New Zealand Story. Nothing worked. Even so, if there were special means to read the data from these disks, it would be almost entirely useless as it couldn't be stored as a tangible ADF file. WinUAE's author Mathias Ortmann ensures us that there are various "levels" of ADF files which make allowances for copy protection - however, without hacking the loader for each game, it's hard to see how this could be implemented universally.

Our final test involved copying files from a small collection of Amiga HD disks - without success. However, these disks were formatted with a non-standard Amiga file system (Diskspare) which, although not supported currently by the card, could be easily added in the future. No great loss, really.

What have we got, then? Make no mistake, the Catweasel is very capable. The metal plate hacksaw incident notwithstanding, the card is competently built to a very professional standard - witness the nice Catweasel logo on the main controller chip. Installation is easy, and the driver commands, functional. Clearly there is a lot of work still to be done, but the card performs well. If you have many boxes of nefariously-sourced Amiga games in your attic (ie. not original copy-protected game disks), the 'Weasel will make light work of converting them all to emulator-friendly ADF files. If you have projects on Amiga disks, you'll be able to copy those individual files directly to your PC hard disk.

At $99, the Catweasel isn't cheap - but in many respects, it's cost-effective. It's cheaper than buying a second-hand Amiga - and even if you preferred that option, you'd still need to get the Amiga to be able to read and write MS-DOS disks and wait extraordinary amounts of time between conversions. The 'Weasel is quick and simple - and for most purposes, it works! DeeJay99