Sold Individual Computers Catweasel MK III "Flipper" floppy controller + C64 SID chip

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torsti76

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Hi,

up for sale is a Individual Computers Catweasel MK III "Flipper" floppy controller including a genuine NOS Commodore 8580R5 SID sound chip.

It is called "Flipper" because it is a combined PCI / Zorro II / A 1200 clockport device.

As a PCI device, it can be used in a PCI equipped PC/Mac or even Amiga (as long as the PCI bridge supports the openpci.library). It enables you to


  • read and write Amiga and C64 (amongst many others) formatted disks on a standard PC with a standard PC floppy drive connected to the Catweasel
  • play back to C64 SID tunes through the original SID chip using the hardsid.library
  • connect your Amiga's mouse, joysticks, and even bigbox keyboard to the PC

Flipped over with the bracket turned by 180°, it can be used to connect a standard PC floppy drive to any Amiga with Zorro slots. Using the Catweasel and it's multidisk.device, you can then read and write a multitude of disk formats on your Amiga.

And finally, it can be used in an A1200 by connecting it to the clockport (cable is not included but can be obtained from Individual Computers.)

To be honest, after buying it from its previous owner, I never came around to using this card. Maybe someone else can put it to better use. It comes with original packaging, short English manual, and a CD the previous owner burned some drivers to. These are freely available, e.g., on aminet.

More info: http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/catweasel3

Asking 199 EUR + shipping + 3% Paypal fees (or Paypal friends and family)

Some pictures:

Catweasel_MKIII_Flipper_00.png


Catweasel_MKIII_Flipper_01.png


Catweasel_MKIII_Flipper_02.png


Catweasel_MKIII_Flipper_03.png


Catweasel_MKIII_Flipper_04.png


Catweasel_MKIII_Flipper_05.png

In case you are interested, please state your interest in this thread and - per Amibay rules - send me a PM.

Thank you,
Torsten
 

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  • Catweasel_MKIII_Flipper_00.jpg
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I never understood why Jens stopped making these. Such a useful device!

Often if things like that disappear from the market, either the cost for one or more components rose dramatically or the achievable price wasn't satisfactory from the start. And, to be honest: With all the Arduino floppy readers and the KryoFlux in much more affordable price regions, I'd think twice about producing something like that commercially...

However, I agree that it's sad to see such sophisticated hardware go. And I would have liked to keep it but am short on money and time atm. :-(
 
I always assumed that his older products went out of production because of RoHS and the market wasn't worth redesigning. Although in the case of the Catweasel family, isn't IV & IV+ RoHS compliant?

Anyway, IMO, the Catweasel serves a market that the Kryoflux / SuperCard / Arduino boards don't. It allows real time floppy access. AFAIK all of the others are just for reading and writing floppy images, not interactive access with a real floppy.
 
Plus the Joystick and SID functionality.

I really miss using mine.

For some time, I was hoping for PCI-passthrough for VMware or similar. Then I would have kept a x32 Windows virtual machine just for my retro purposes :) .
 
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