Is there a batch .lha converter?

[Lektroid]

Hi, I've been using the handful of WHDLoad games which I got on CF card when I bought my A1200, these were already converted (I never knew how to make native .lha games run). I have recently stumbled upon the TOSEC collection which is full of tens of thousands of .lha files. I am wondering if there is a way to batch convert .lha files to be executable files to load directly with WHDLoad?

I'd be happy to do the conversion externally for speed (I have both Mac and PC), or on the Amiga itself (A1200). Or even if someone knows a routine I can enter to batch convert them using the CLI.


If anyone can help, it would be a huge help, and very much appreciated.

[yelworC]

LHA files are archive files similar to zip and rar and so on.

7zip on the PC can open them.. so you can select them all in windows explorer window and then select 7zip extract all from context menu and they will be extracted.. after that there should be a ton of folders where every folder contains one game that was inside one lha file

So its not converting files, its simple unarchiving them the same way you do with zip and similar files.

you could do this on the amiga with for example an on the fly generated script file using the "list" format but this would really take ages on a real amiga

[Daedalus]

It should be noted however, that using 7Zip, or any unarchiver on a PC or non-Amiga filesystem runs the risk of losing important file properties, such as permission flags, comments and non-standard filenames. More often than not this doesn't cause any problems, but it's worth bearing in mind.

If speed is an issue, mounting the CF card on the PC and using WinUAE to unarchive them might be worth looking at.

[mcbpete]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

It should be noted however, that using 7Zip, or any unarchiver on a PC or non-Amiga filesystem runs the risk of losing important file properties, such as permission flags, comments and non-standard filenames.

Definitely this! Had first hand experience and had to redownload a big collection that I'd screwed up by extracting them *outside* and Amiga environment. Found that there were quite a lot of unusually named files in WHDLoad games that immediately cause the Windows/Dos filesystem to have a big moan.

Easiest thing to batch extract them (either on the Amiga itself, or via an WinUAE environment) would be to get a hold of a copy of Directory Opus. You can then just have the source lhas in one pane, the target location for the extracted folders in the other, select all of the archive files and press 'Arc Ext'

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by Lektroid

I am wondering if there is a way to batch convert .lha files to be executable files to load directly with WHDLoad?

Does the .lha files include floppy images or something else?

Anyway, in order to convert you need the WHDLoad installer for each game, which can be found here:

http://whdload.de/download.html

When running the WHDLoad installer of the slave on your Amiga you will be asked to insert the original floppy of the game (rawdic), you can skip this and use the "select file" option if you have the game floppy image in .adf format.

There is no way to automate this AFAIK, but there are packs of games ready for WHDLoad which can be found on Turran's ftp server.

[Ian]

TOSEC doesn't have any LHA files.

If WHDLoad is your favoured method for games, then just download retoplays collection from Turrans' Amiga FTP site.

You can probably just highlight all of them and extract them to your SD card as Deadalus said though some permission won't be correct on the files, but it will be a very small percentage of them affected.

If you want to do this from the amiga side, you need to setup dopus and configure some of the buttons to do this, I believe a few people have shared their configs for dopus which you can do this from. It's pretty easy though.

Here's one example here: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=106935

There's many more though.

[mrv2k]

You could use the List command in AmigaDOS to make up a batch file. You'd need lha installed in your c: drawer. For example...

list >test PAT=#?.lha LFORMAT "LHA x %n"

The command would need to be done in each drawer and then you just execute the test script. Here's an example of the output generated.

LHA x NinjaGaiden2_v0.1_BETA.lha
LHA x NightWalk_v1.0_BETA.lha
LHA x NibblerSuperExtra_v1.0.lha
LHA x Neutralizer2Demo_v0.1_BETA.lha
LHA x Netherworld_v1.5_2033_BETA.lha

This is the simplest way to do it, you can make it as complicated as you want and automate the whole process with basic amigados commands.

[arcam]

Originally Posted by mrv2k

You could use the List command in AmigaDOS to make up a batch file. You'd need lha installed in your c: drawer. For example...

list >test PAT=#?.lha LFORMAT "LHA x %n"

The command would need to be done in each drawer and then you just execute the test script. Here's an example of the output generated.

LHA x NinjaGaiden2_v0.1_BETA.lha
LHA x NightWalk_v1.0_BETA.lha
LHA x NibblerSuperExtra_v1.0.lha
LHA x Neutralizer2Demo_v0.1_BETA.lha
LHA x Netherworld_v1.5_2033_BETA.lha

This is the simplest way to do it, you can make it as complicated as you want and automate the whole process with basic amigados commands.

Cool tips ! Thanks

[Channel-Z]

If you want to extract lha files in batches on PC without any file/drawer name issues like when using 7zip etc. Someone on here recommended Extractnow. I have been using it for a while now no issues, nice light program and has some nice features. get it here https://extractnow.com/#/home

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by mrv2k

You could use the List command in AmigaDOS to make up a batch file. You'd need lha installed in your c: drawer. For example...

This is already accomplished by SPat, which is already in your path.

[Yesideez]

Originally Posted by mrv2k

You could use the List command in AmigaDOS to make up a batch file. You'd need lha installed in your c: drawer. For example...

list >test PAT=#?.lha LFORMAT "LHA x %n"

The command would need to be done in each drawer and then you just execute the test script. Here's an example of the output generated.

The only extra step I add in this is sorting the contents of the generated script:

1.SYS:> list >ram:tr #?.lha lformat "lha x *"%n*""
1.SYS:> sort ram:tr to ram:tr
1.SYS:> execute ram:tr

That way if for some reason one of the files fails, it terminates the script and you know straight away how far it got without loading the file ram:tr into something like Ed and hunting for it. I've also added quotes around the archive name just in case as with *" around %n if a space is present, it'll stop. None of the WHDL files have spaces that I've found so far but - I like to err on the side of caution.