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Installing the Zip Kit from Abacus You have four Menu choices. They are: PKZIP, LHARC & Co. - This is a collection of the BEST DOS-based shareware data compression programs available today. You MUST use these utilities at your DOS prompt. When you install the PZKIP, LHARC & Co. collection the INSTALL program will copy the following utilities and their respective sub-directories into a directory on your hard drive called PACKDISK: PKZip Ver. 2.04g, ARJ Ver. 2.41, LHArc Ver. 2.13, DIET, LH-ICE, LZ-EXE, PKLITE Ver. 1.03 and ZOO Ver. 2.1. The manuals for each data compression utility will be located in their respective directory. GRAPHIC COMPRESSION - This is a collection of the BEST Windows graphic utilities that you will need to convert, compress and manipulate your graphic files. This option will allow you to install the following graphic utilities: PaintShop Pro Ver. 3, Graphic WorkShop, VidVue and PhotoWorks. WINZIP 5.6A - This is the premiere data compression utility for Windows 3.xx and Windows for Workgroups. Written by Nico Mak Computing, the printed manual is located in the book PKZIP, LHARC & Co. This option will allow you to install WINZIP95 - This is the premiere data compression utility for Windows 95. You MUST have Windows 95 or Windows NT to run this shareware utility. This option will allow you to install Answer: When you type a command, DOS looks for it in the C:\DOS directory and other directories listed in your PATH statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file located in your C: root directory. If it cannot find what it's looking for in the PATH, it won't be able to access it. Your PATH statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT may look like this: PATH C:\DOS;C:\WINDOWS If you want PKZIP, LHArc and ARJ programs in your PATH, it should look like: PATH C:\DOS;C:\WINDOWS;C:\PACKDISK;C:\PACKDISK\PKZIP ;C:\PACKDISK\ARJ;C:\PACKDISK\LHA WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! To change your AUTOEXEC.BAT, you must EDIT your AUTOEXEC.BAT file and include the statement above or necessary additional contents. If you don't know how to do this, we strongly encourage you to consult your DOS manual for the correct syntax to do this. It's not a difficult process, but it must be right. To view your present PATH, Type type autoexec.bat This will let you see your PATH as it exists now. You won't be able to alter it, just view it. WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! To give you some idea of what's involved in altering your PATH, here's a brief look at the first step. Don't do anything until you know what you're doing. Consult your DOS manual. To change your PATH, you first have to be able to access your autoexec.bat file. To do that, the first thing you'd do is Type edit autoexec. bat Warning: It's a this point that if you alter anything on the screen, the entire operation of your system may change. You could say that this screen of your autoexec.bat is like the right side of your computer's brain. One could say it's here that your computer is told what to do in terms of executing your programs. It is in this screen that you'd make the modifications to put PKZIP in your PATH. Consult your DOS manual. Know what you're doing before you make any modifications. Question: How do I 'zip' a file? Answer: To compress a file, you must be in the directory where the file which you want to compress is located. For example, we want to compress a program named TEXT.EXE in the TEXT directory. And, you need to create a filename for the file you want to compress. So, in this example we're going to compress a text file from something you did at work and we'll create a 'zipped' file called WORK. At your C:\ prompt type CD TEXT and press Enter (now you should be in the TEXT directory) Next, type (for example: pkzip) pkzip work.zip text.exe and press Enter Now you should have a new file called "WORK" where your compressed text will stay until you decompress it. To compress several files in the same directory (in this example all DOC, TXT and EXE files) type: pkzip work.zip *.doc *.txt *.exe and press Enter When it is finished you will have a compressed zipped file called WORK.zip. Also see pages 51-53. Question: How do I 'unzip' or uncompress a file? Answer: If you've downloaded (or somehow received) a program with the extention '.ZIP' you need to 'uncompress' this pkzipped file. Let's pretend we've download a file like the one we created above called: WORK. Type: pkunzip WORK.zip and press Enter If you've downloaded (or somehow received) a program with the extention '.LZH' you need to 'uncompress' this file. Let's continue to use our WORK file example. Type: lharc x WORK.LZH and press Enter If you've downloaded (or somehow received) a program with the extention '.ARJ' you need to 'uncompress' this file. Type: arj e WORK.ARJ and press Enter Question: What is a self-extracting file? How do I create a 'self-extracting' pkzip archive file? Answer: A self-extracting compressed file is a file that, when run, will uncompress itself into one or more files that are not compressed. For example, if you had the file WORK.EXE you would type WORK and press Enter. This file would then re-create all of the DOC, TXT and EXE files that were contained in it. Answer: To create a self-extracting ZIP file there is a two step process. First you must create the zipped archive. After you have a file with the ZIP extension on it, you can then create a self-extracting ZIPped file by typing: ZIP2EXE filename.zip (in this case) ZIP2EXE WORK.ZIP and press Enter This will create a file called WORK.exe. When this program is run, it will uncompress all files that are contained in it. Answer 2: To create a self-extracting archive using LHA do the following: To create a self-extracting archive do this: Make sure you have LHAexe in your DOS directory. Type: LHA a archive -r -x c:\directory\*.* and press Enter This will create a file called archive.lzh Then type: LHA s -x1 archive and press Enter That's it! You will then have a file called archive.exe with all the files and sub-directories in it. You may then copy and send it to whomever. They, in turn, will run the program and it will create the directory with files on their system. Also see pages 103-104 Question: How do I create an archived file that will span more than one disk? For example 2 Mb? Answer: Use the ARJ program to create archives that are larger than 1.4 Mb after they are compressed. First, be sure you have a few formatted diskettes (in this example 1.44 Mb disks) ready to use. Type the command (in the directory that the programs to be compressed is in): ARJ A -VV1440 A:\archive and press Enter Depending on the final compressed size of the file, you will need several disks. For example, a 20 Mb file compressed to 5.5 Mb (or 4 diskettes). After you have compressed the file on several diskettes, label each according to how they were used. For example 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. To uncompress these files in the directory you are currently in, type the following with your disk labeled 1: ARJ e a:\archive and press Enter After this archive is done, do the same for each disk labeled 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. Also see pages 145-148. 
