CatWeasel

: This article is about the computer hardware device. For the children s television show, see Catweazle .

The CatWeasel is a family of enhanced floppy disk drive controllers from Germany company Individual Computers. These controllers are designed to allow newer computers, such as IBM PC Compatibles, to access a wide variety of older disk formats using standard floppy drives.

The initial version of the CatWeasel was introduced circa 1996 and has since undergone several revisions. The CatWeasel MK2, for the A1200 and A4000, sold out in October 2001. The MK3 added PC compatibility, and as such represented the major breakthrough of the CatWeasel, volume-wise. It sold out in mid-2004, and is succeeded by the new and improved MK4.

Because of widespread shortage (due to low production volumes) and relatively high demand, older versions of the CatWeasel can accrue high prices when sold privately; for instance on the Internet auction site EBay.

=CatWeasel MK3=

The CatWeasel MK3 was designed with the goal of maximum compatibility, and would interface with either a Peripheral Component Interconnect slot, an Amiga Zorro slot or the clock-port of an Amiga 1200. In addition to the low-level access granted to floppy drives, it has a socket for a Commodore 64 MOS Technology SID sound chip, a port for an Amiga 2000 keyboard, and two 9-pin digital joysticks ( Atari 2600 de facto standard).

The SID chip socket allows CatWeasel users to play SID chiptunes on the real chip instead of relying on software emulation (which is evidently an unsatisfying reproduction of the original), for original sounding SID playback. The VICE emulator supports the CatWeasel s SID features starting with version 1.13. The CatWeasel MK3 sold out in mid-2004.

As of September 2004, software support for major operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Linux was limited, although new drivers and hardware were under development (see below). The most promising development for the floppy controller portion was reported to be a modular software product for Windows called Arjuna, the first public version of which was announced on 8 February, 2004.

=CatWeasel MK4=

The CatWeasel MK4 was officially announced on July 18th, 2004, with a wide array of new features planned. However, due to manufacturing delays and production backlogs, the MK4 was not released until early February 2005.

The latest versions of the CatWeasel are implemented by heavy use of reconfigurable logic in the form of Field-programmable gate array chips. On the MK4, software drivers may update the hardware directly so that e.g. unsupported disk formats at the time of shipping can be added simply by downloading the new setup code through the Internet and then reprogramming the hardware core with the CatWeasel still sitting in the host computer.

The Catweasel MK4 is planned to be delivered with drivers for GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP, and Amiga OS; additionally, the intention is to support Mac OS X at a later date.

=External links=

*[http://www.jschoenfeld.com/products/catweasel_e.htm CatWeasel product webpage], [http://www.jschoenfeld.com/news/news99_e.htm Catweasel MK4 announcement] *[http://arjuna.sourceforge.net/ Arjuna floppy controller software homepage], *[http://www.tim-mann.org/catweasel.html Catweasel Floppy Read/Write Tools for TRS-80 & DEC RX-02 diskettes]