22 Oct
2012
22 Oct
'12
6:01 p.m.
On 10/22/2012 05:03 PM, Chris Tofu wrote:
C: Ok, but the Catweasel is no longer produced. And
assuming I had
one (preferably the MKIV I supposed), would it be effective in
reproducing data from *old* disks, say that worked fine 1-5 years
ago, but are just deteriorating due to basic age, or temperature
swings? Along w/the materials you described? It seems worth it to
extract said data, even if it requires a certain amount of
*processing*. Is the Catweasel a difficult device to reproduce? How
long can you expect a deteriorated disk to last?
The Catweasel can be reproduced with just about any modern
microcontroller capable of addressing 128K of RAM (either the RAM is
on-chip or external). Just use the timer "capture" facility of the
chip and stash the lower 8 bits of every capture value in the RAM. The
rest is interfacing--use USB if you want. I've done it using something
as slow as an ATMEGA162 running at 16MHz (there was more than enough
speed to handle a 500Kbps high-density data stream).
The rest is programming and interfacing. There is really not much to
it. The last iteration of the Catweasel had some fancy features and a
selectable clock rate up to 56MHz, but basically it was the same idea as
the earliest ISA one (which may still be available in the US, at least).
People grouse because there wasn't much software written for the CW, but
that shouldn't be a problem if you know what you're doing.
--Chuck