Better archiver that LZX with small unarc tool

[Thorham]

Can't get RAR to compress better than LZX and the unrar executable is still too big.

Stupid question: Have you tried RAR's 'Create solid archive' option?

Also, try compressing executables and libraries with Power Packer to save more space.

[Thorham]

if you could give me an compressionrate optimized command line sample for RAR I'd appreciate it.

Sorry, I only use the Windows GUI version I don't even have it on the Amiga, and always use LZX. Just read about RAR's features and how to use them in the manual, or compress them on the pc. Not much help, I know

[Thorham]

What are you trying to do exactly, and how much more space do you need? I assume everything must fit on a 880Kb formatted floppy? Perhaps it can still be done with just LZX.

[Thorham]

But, what exactly is the data you're storing? Archivers are general purpose and may net be optimal for the things you're compressing.

[Thorham]

sorry but nothing superior exists

As far as Amiga file system specific archivers go, that's probably true. But when compressing specific file formats you can almost always do better than any archiver can. For example, for raw audio, FLAC will always beat any general purpose archiver hands down, no questions asked. For non-lossy images you need the PNG format (and that's not fantastic either). For text files you can do better as well if you have a specialized text compressor, and so on.

In this case, the problem is the multiple file formats, but it could've been just audio, or just text, and then we could've done better than archivers.

[Thorham]

All versions of LZX are bugged.

How do you know this?

For audio, Shorten (.SHN) will always beat FLAC hands-down.  Approximately the same compression but shorten uses massively less CPU power to decompress.

And has far fewer features than modern lossless codecs. I also doubt Shorten is as good as modern codecs. And last but not least, I use a fast peecee for playback, and FLAC uses up an infinitesimal amount of CPU time here. On Amigas I use WAV. Much faster.

Anyway, seeing how the OP wants the best compression rates and it's for archiving, FLAC would be the way to go if their data was mostly audio.

2. You forgot to assign T: to your hard drive somewhere.  I know its dumb and not your fault but that is just how it is with lha making large archives.

Why would anyone want to assign T: to their HD?

Until you can prove LZX is bugged, I'm gonna stick to LZX :p

[Thorham]

You could create a single boot floppy with all the xad/xfd/xpk libs/decrunchers you need and use it to boot up and decrunch the stuff that is on your other disks.

Good idea!

In addition, you can also use a 1MB file system. Disks formatted with that give you almost a megabyte of free space (the filesystem uses the whole disk, OFS and FFS don't).