Better archiver that LZX with small unarc tool

[nicholas]

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

Indeed.  It would be useful to know exactly what he's trying to compress as one size does not fit all when it comes to compression.

[Brian]

Indeed.  It would be useful to know exactly what he's trying to compress as one size does not fit all when it comes to compression.

Texts, pictures, executables etc... a general mix of things that LZX seem to to a good jobb of compress (about 60% i think). As said, I'm pleased with LZX's compression, I know LZX2 (.cab) compress it better by about 50KB but with extractiontool 4 times that it's not an option unless someone have 68000 compatible, library free, LZX2 extractor that takes less than 63KB.

[LaserBack]

LZX is the best and fastest compression tool for the Amiga
 sorry but nothing superior exists

[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.

[ChaosLord]

All versions of LZX are bugged.

LZX should never be used for anything since they are all bugged and you never know when the bug will strike and ruin your archive.

LZX is very most definitely not the fastest at creating archives.

If you want something that can quickly create an archive and that actually works all the time, you need LHA.

[ChaosLord]

For example, for raw audio, FLAC will always beat any general purpose archiver hands down, no questions asked.

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

[Leffmann]

If you want something that can quickly create an archive and that actually works all the time, you need LHA.

Not very quick nor working all the time. I was trying to create a big archive from about 40k files totaling 800M, and after 40 minutes on a 50MHz 68030 LHA hadn't even reported on the first file, but had instead managed to corrupt memory and crash AmigaOS.

So, if anyone's doing big archives you might want to look at yet another option.

[ChaosLord]

1. You forgot to install TLSFmem into your OS.  You absolutely must do this.

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.

[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

[asymetrix]

7zip ?

[SamuraiCrow]

7zip ?

...is a memory hog compared to the others on Amiga.

[nyteschayde]

I used the EPU14 Packer in the past alongside the NUKE compression algo. It worked really well for me. I was able to put all of WB1.3 and Extras on a single DD floppy.

http://aminet.net/package/util/pack/epu14

You copy the base libs over (really not much needed) and then execute them very early in startup. You have to make sure to leave uncompressed anything that needs to execute, but this isn't much. You can use XPK style compressors like xpkNUKE and you don't even need the large xpkmaster.library file. You only need the following files on the disk in an uncompressed status

DF0:S/Startup-Sequence [variable number of bytes]
DF0:C/EPU [8916 bytes]
DF0:L/EPU1.handler [3496 bytes]
DF0:L/EPU2.handler [10100 bytes]
DF0:L/EPU3.handler [5708 bytes]
DF0:Libs/epu0.library [4192 bytes]
DF0:Libs/epu1.library [1564 bytes]
DF0:Libs/lh.library [2864 bytes]
DF0:Libs/xpkNUKE.library [2900 bytes]

Total: 39740 bytes

Everything else is compressed at over 40% when using a library like NUKE and it's possible that epu1.library and perhaps some of the other numbered handlers may not be required either. This also works on OS 1.x, 2.x and 3.x.

The compression and decompression is completely transparent and you don't need any other files hanging around to decompress anything. You can even place all the files on the disk while the compression flag is enabled and then once it's all set, you boot the disk with compression off and only decompression on. This prevents you from worrying that someone will compress one of the critical startup files.

[Brian]

7zip ?

Apart from the main program it also requier a 175KB library... not an option.

[nicholas]

Texts, pictures, executables etc... a general mix of things that LZX seem to to a good jobb of compress (about 60% i think). As said, I'm pleased with LZX's compression, I know LZX2 (.cab) compress it better by about 50KB but with extractiontool 4 times that it's not an option unless someone have 68000 compatible, library free, LZX2 extractor that takes less than 63KB.

If you are only compresing for archiving/backup purposes why do you need to fit the unarchiver on the same floppy? 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.

Have you tried the '-3' argument with LHA btw?  Might shave of a few bytes here and there and be comparable to LZX.

Save your bitmaps as PNG, your photos as JPEG, your text and exes/libs/devices/handlers etc with XZ/NUKE/RAR/EPU (or whichever) and you should be able to fit a lot more on a floppy than just plain old LZX for everything.

[ChaosLord]

@Brian

If you are using KS 3.0 in your machine then you are allowed to format your floppy disks using FFS instead of OFS.  This gives you a bunch of extra storage space for free.

[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).