Using an original A600/A1200 floppy drive with Catweasel 4/4Plus - possible or not?

FirstNinja · Apr 7th 2019

The official Catweasel 4/4Plus manual mentions that the onboard floppy controller is compatible with a few different brands of 3.5" floppy drives meant for non-Amiga computers, like Mitsumi D359 and Samsung SFD-321B. The manual doesn't, however, specifically say whether or not original Amiga DD floppy drives (like A600/A1200 drives) are compatible .

Are they, or does the Catsweasel 4/4Plus only accept non-Amiga floppy drives? If original Amiga drives are in fact compatible - is there an Amiga specific manual for the Catweasel available from somewhere?

Jens · Apr 8th 2019

Quote from FirstNinja

The manual doesn't, however, specifically say whether or not original Amiga DD floppy drives (like A600/A1200 drives) are compatible .

These are not compatible, as they use a different pinout.

You can sometimes change the pinout with jumpers; if you have the jumper description of the drive you own, please make sure that Pin#34 is "disk change". The Catweasel does not use the "Ready" signal, as it's just looking at "Index" for checking if the motor is at nominal speed.

Next, make sure that the drive is jumpered to "select 1" - the Amiga normally uses "select 0".

Once these two things are corrected, the Amiga drive will work on the Catweasel - it won't work on the Amiga any more, though.

FirstNinja · Apr 8th 2019

Quote from Jens

Once these two things are corrected, the Amiga drive will work on the Catweasel - it won't work on the Amiga any more, though.

Thank you for your thorough answer - I really appreciate it. I'll bookmark this post for future reference in case a non-Amiga floppy drive turns out to be out of the question to use.