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Amiga Format: Get the Most Out of Your Amiga
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Amiga Format - Get the Most Out of Your Amiga (1991)(Future Publishing)(GB)(Disk 1 of 2).adf
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Cruncher
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Cruncher.DOC
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1978-06-19
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August 20, 1988
This is an altered version of Crunch which will not display the annoying
rainbow graphics when run. Also, when you crunch a file with this version,
the crunched file will run without displaying the rainbow graphics while
uncrunching. Thanks to Steve Tibbett (author of VirusX, TaskX, ScreenX) for
writing CPatch, a patch that would remove the rainbow from a crunched file,
and to D.J. James (author of Comm1.34) for taking it a step further and
writing CPatch2.0, a patch that would patch the Crunch program itself to
eliminate the rainbow altogether. I have run D.J.'s patch on Crunch, and the
version included in this archive is the patched version.
WARNING: I did not write this program, just this doc file, which is based on
my own experimentation with Crunch. Since it is based on just my own
experimentation, and not on any access to or knowledge of the original source
code, everything I say might be wrong :-). I found it on GEnie, normally an
at least semi-reputable network :-), with no docs at all, nothing in the arc
file but the program, and a short one paragraph description of it before
downloading. It appears obvious to me that this program was written by one
of the many European pirate groups. The name "The New Masters", the lack of
docs, and the rainbow graphics (removed from this version - it was very
annoying) are a dead giveaway. However, this can be a very useful utility,
particularly for those whose Workbench disk is stuffed full of utilities and
can't find room for any more. Experiment with Crunch; test it thoroughly
before you use it on anything valuable to you. It works great for me, but
given the ancestry of it I can't guarantee it will not cause you problems.
Use it only on backup copies.
Crunch is a utility that compresses single programs only, unlike ARC,
ZOO, or PAK, which can compress several files into one archive. The big
difference is, after compression with Crunch, the program is still an
executable file and does NOT have to be "unarc'd" or uncompressed before
being run. Like a PAK'd file, you do not need the original compression
program to uncompress a file. With PAK though, you must first unPAK the
file, and then run the program. With Crunch, the file uncompresses itself on
the fly and runs exactly like any other executable program, yet takes up much
less space on your disk. The added time it takes to uncompress itself
varies, but is usually not significant.
Run Crunch from the CLI. It brings up its own screen with just three
menu items: Open, Write, and Quit. When first started, the Write option is
not available until you Open something and "crunch" it. Then it can be
written back to disk. Select Open from the menu, and choose the program you
want to crunch from the file requester that comes up. The size in bytes of
the file will be displayed as the Source in the list on the left. The two
large blocks labeled 'Time Control' and 'Speed Control' will graphically show
you what's happening while the file is being crunched. When finished, the
size of the file after crunching will be displayed as Destination in the list
on the left. This size, plus the small 680 byte header that is added, equals
the total size which is displayed as All in the list.
Now you can select Write from the menu. When the file requester comes
up it should still have the program's name in the string gadget, so you can
just click OK and the newly-crunched, smaller file will be written to disk
and replace the old larger file. The new, crunched file can still be run
either from the CLI or via Workbench, just like the old one.
If in the future you want to permanently uncrunch a file that you have
used Crunch on (i.e., return it to its normal size and state), just select
Open from the menu and then choose the file just as you would one that you
wanted to crunch. Crunch will detect that the file is already crunched, and
will uncrunch it, displaying some graphics while doing so in the large block
labeled 'Uncruncher Control'. Its size before and after will also be
displayed as Source and Destination on the left. Then select Write from the
menu and write it back to disk in place of the crunched file. (Note: Crunch
itself has been crunched to reduce its size from 11796 bytes to 8592 bytes;
you can uncrunch it if you like.)
I ran into several problems with Crunch. After crunching and saving to
a disk, the icon for that disk would not go away without rebooting. I got
several gurus in a row when I tried to save the crunched file to a device
other than the one it came from. You may or may not have these problems too.
When I booted up with a standard unaltered Workbench disk, Crunch seemed to
be less finicky. There also appear to be some programs that Crunch will not
compress. Three that I tried that it refused to do were DeluxePaintII,
Sculpt3D, and PhotonPaint. A message in the 'Status Line' said "bad hunc
structure" and the left mouse button had to be pressed to halt everything.
Here are some examples from my experiments:
Digi-Paint: 102448 bytes before crunching, 13 seconds to load & run
65438 bytes after crunching, 15 seconds to load & run
Preferences: 58868 bytes before crunching, 8 seconds to load & run
35124 bytes after crunching, 8 seconds to load & run
PixMate: 109600 bytes before crunching, 17 seconds to load & run
81836 bytes after crunching, 26 seconds to load & run
Crunch seemed to also work fine on the few AmigaDOS commands that I
tried it on (Run, NewCli, FastMemFirst). I'd recommend that you do your own
experimenting on some backup copies, until you see exactly how Crunch works
and are satisfied it will not cause you any problems.
-Joel Salazar
GEnie: WALRUS
PeopleLink: WALRUS
CompuServe: 73557,2347
QuantumLink: SKYRAT