CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

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msalcedo
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CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

Post by msalcedo »

I seem to recall A1-G3 and G4 had floppy drive issues and only worked under linux? (wrong myth?)

Is anyone using floppies on the G3 in os4.1.3?
If I attach the floppy drive to the motherboard, will it work?
I had not connected the floppy drive, as I was hoping to use cd-r's most of the time from my A4000.
But now, that I have this A1-G3 running well... OS4.1.3 and nec usb and enet (yes!!!)

I also want to use standard amiga floppies again to install classic software.
Or do I have to use maybe a catweasel?
Has anyone installed a Catweasel 3 in the A1-G3?

Thanks, Michael
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Re: CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

Post by Spektro »

msalcedo wrote:I seem to recall A1-G3 and G4 had floppy drive issues and only worked under linux? (wrong myth?)

Is anyone using floppies on the G3 in os4.1.3?
If I attach the floppy drive to the motherboard, will it work?
I had not connected the floppy drive, as I was hoping to use cd-r's most of the time from my A4000.
But now, that I have this A1-G3 running well... OS4.1.3 and nec usb and enet (yes!!!)

I also want to use standard amiga floppies again to install classic software.
Or do I have to use maybe a catweasel?
Has anyone installed a Catweasel 3 in the A1-G3?
Wrong myth. To activate A1's floppy drive do as follows:
1) Attach floppy drive to the motherboard with a flat ribbon cable. Do not use round cable.
2) Modify Kernel configuration so that the a1floppy.device will be available at boot time: Open file SYS:Kickstart/Kicklayout with NotePad. Locate line ;MODULE Kickstart/a1floppy.device.kmod and remove semicolon at the beginning of the line. Save the Kicklayout file and quit NotePad.
3) To make AmigaOS automatically mount the disk, drag icon FD0 from the SYS:Storage/DOSDrivers/ drawer to the SYS:Devs/DOSDrivers/ drawer.
4) Perform a hard reset so that A1 loads the Kernel.

And that's it. You should now have a working high density floppy drive.

By default the automatic disk check function is turned off. To make AmigaOS automatically detect inserted and removed disks you need to add the following line to the User-startup: FDTool >NIL: UNIT=0 AUTO.
Note also that the disks must be formatted through Shell before they appear on the Workbench. To format a disk open Shell and enter command format drive fd0: name="Empty".

In order to use the old (standard) Amiga disks you have to use Catweasel.
- Janne Peräaho
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msalcedo
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Re: CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

Post by msalcedo »

@Spektro
Excellent response! Many thanks for the great info.
I will try this tonight.

What's the difference between a flat or round cable? AND/OR why is a flat cable better?

After I get motherboard floppy working, I will try the catweasel.

Thanks again,
Michael
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Re: CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

Post by Spektro »

msalcedo wrote:@Spektro
Excellent response! Many thanks for the great info.
I will try this tonight.

What's the difference between a flat or round cable? AND/OR why is a flat cable better?
You're welcome :)

Actually I don't know what's the difference. I remember someone reporting several years ago that round cable didn't work but flat one did. I have a flat cable and I've never tried a round one. Round cable may or may not work, but I'm sure that flat one does work.

If you enable the auto disk check function, note that there are differences between floppy drives of how loud they are.
  • Teac drive ticks like a classic Amiga drive (I have one)
  • Sony drives are reported to be completely silent
  • Panasonic drives tick like the classic Amiga drives (I have two)
My first Panasonic drive is quite loud but the second is quieter than Teac. So there are differences even between model to model.
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Re: CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

Post by ssolie »

msalcedo wrote:What's the difference between a flat or round cable?
Resistance to noise. Not to mention all the official standards specify flat cable only.

I think the so-called "round" cables were invented by the sales guys because the flat cables look ugly. It just got worse from there and soon everybody thought the round cables were the norm.
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Re: CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

Post by clint »

Although my A1 XE-G4 appears to have a round cable I have been able to get the Floppy drive working using these instructions. I have also used the Format option in Workbench-System-Format and have formatted at 1.4m, High Density and 720k, Double Density, using the Format option. Quick Format gives a Cylinder 0 error so use the full format option. The Floppy Drive gives a hardly audible click about every 10 seconds.

This is on Update 2 will try it on Update 3 later.
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Re: CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

Post by msalcedo »

Thanks everyone.
I followed your very good information and was able to start using floppies.
I really didn't intend to use floppies for floppies sake.
I really wanted to use my older amiga (3.x) apps... so
I will report back on the catweasel as soon as I get it and set it up.

Michael
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Re: CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

Post by tonyw »

You'll probably find that you can't use old Amiga floppies without using the CatWeasel. The floppy controller in the Southbridge only understands PC formatting, so it can never read an Amiga-formatted floppy.
cheers
tony
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Re: CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

Post by msalcedo »

@tonyw
Yes, I discovered the floppy standard.
So, I'm waiting for a catweasel to try.

Thanks for the info.

Michael
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Re: CatWeasel 3 in AmigaOne G3 or floppy drive questions

Post by Spektro »

@msalcedo

There is one other way (other than Catweasel) to read the standard Amiga disks with AmigaOne: disk images.
This is how you can do it:

Step 1: Create a disk image from your floppy disk with your A4000.
Step 2: Transfer the image file to AmigaOne.
Step 3: Mount the disk image with DiskImageGUI.

I recommend TransADF (http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/TransADF) for creating disk images.
DiskImageGUI is included in AmigaOS4. You can find it from the System drawer.
- Janne Peräaho
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