Unarc ?

[Washac]

Hi All


I went looking for an Unarc App for LHA files etc...

I found apps to do this on the Aminet but guess what they are in LHA format.

Where can I get the App that I require not in LHA format ?

A nice simple to use one would be good, I seem ot recall all that command line stuff
of years ago.


Thanks for reading....

[alexh]

http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/lha

[Washac]

Originally Posted by alexh

http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/lha

Hi


That was quick

Forgot to mention before but I recall when the Thalian Webshrine first got going and I
was in contact with yourself regarding Ambermoon and Amberstar, nice historical
site, I thank you for it

[amigakit.com]

Also if you have EasyADF software this will Unarchive an LHA file with a few clicks.

[Washac]

Originally Posted by amigakit.com

Also if you have EasyADF software this will Unarchive an LHA file with a few clicks.

Hi


Yes I have that on order, did not realise it did LHA...

Thanks.

[amigakit.com]

Yes, EasyADF can decompress (unarchive) LHA and compress directories or whole partitions to LHA.

[Allen1]

Until your disk arrives you could also open LHA archives on your PC with Winrar.

[alexh]

Unless the archive has filenames with characters which are legal under FFS but illegal with NTFS / FAT.

[Allen1]

Originally Posted by alexh

Unless the archive has filenames with characters which are legal under FFS but illegal with NTFS / FAT.

That's very true alex, good point, I should have said its ok for fat95,cfd and ADF2disk etc where you can open the LHA archives and transfer the necessary files from you PC to the Amiga via serial cable disk or CF adapter if you already have one set up.

[alexh]

I don't think it is safe to unarchive LHA's containing files with certain characters (even using an Amiga) if the destination drive is formatted with NTFS, FAT or FAT32. That would include a CF card formatted for use with the Amiga fat95 filesystem driver.

Has to be a drive with an Amiga filesystem. SFS, PFS3, FFS, OFS etc.

Usually there is no error or warning. WinRAR unpacks the LHA and file names just get truncated and so ultimately the contents doesn't work properly.

The Thalion game Amberstar is one such game where I think some of the files are named Amber_*

[Allen1]

Originally Posted by alexh

I don't think it is safe to unarchive LHA's containing files with certain characters (even using an Amiga) if the destination drive is formatted with NTFS, FAT or FAT32. That would include a CF card formatted for use with the Amiga fat95 filesystem driver.

Has to be a drive with an Amiga filesystem. SFS, PFS3, FFS, OFS etc.

Usually there is no error or warning. WinRAR unpacks the LHA and file names just get truncated and so ultimately the contents doesn't work properly.

The Thalion game Amberstar is one such game where I think some of the files are named Amber_*

The longer than 8 and 3 character names are preserved on my system as in the example "ActivateCrossIDEfix" from th c directory in IDEfix97.lha when extracted with Winrar to my laptop hard drive under Windows XP Pro service pack 3 and so are all the other names unless I put them on a CD and read then on the Amiga..

I havent used my Amiga long enough to argue with this point, but this is the method I used to set up my initial system and transfer WHDLoad and lots of WHLoad games, the initial set up system was then backed up onto a fat formatted CF card in the PCMCIA slot and successfully copied over to another 2 Amigas without any real problems. I know that if I burn a CD with WHDLoad games on it, the problems you mention are there and the Amiga cannot recognise most of what is there, if I then place the same CD in my laptop and copy the files to a fat formatted CF card and place that in the PCMCIA slot, those files/games are recognised and work no problem.

A strange beast is the Amiga and its long filenames.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Allen1

The longer than 8 and 3 character names are preserved on my system as in the example "ActivateCrossIDEfix" from the c directory in IDEfix97.lha when extracted with Winrar to my laptop hard drive under Windows XP Pro service pack 3

Non of the files in this archive have names with characters which are illegal for PC disk formats.

Originally Posted by Allen1

this is the method I used to set up my initial system and transfer WHDLoad and lots of WHLoad games

WHDload games are usually 1-file per disk. They usually do not consist of the actual Amiga files contained on those disks and so are not as susceptible to containing illegal characters.

Originally Posted by Allen1

I know that if I burn a CD with WHDLoad games on it, the problems you mention are there and the Amiga cannot recognise most of what is there, if I then place the same CD in my laptop and copy the files to a fat formatted CF card and place that in the PCMCIA slot, those files/games are recognised and work no problem.

I believe this is due to a different reason. It sounds to me like your Amiga CDFS driver does not support the ISO9660 Joliet extension for long filenames. It will only see the standard ISO9660 8.3 names. I believe that if you had used a better CDFS driver or burned your CD with the Rockridge extension it would have worked as well as if it had been a CF card.

Originally Posted by Allen1

A strange beast is the Amiga and its long filenames.

The problem I was reporting is nothing to do with "long filenames". It is to do with filenames containing characters which are illegal for PC disk formats such as NTFS and FAT but fine for Amiga formats.

e.g. the characters *<>?| etc.

[Allen1]

The files I already mentioned do not contain any illegal character, remember that the common way to transfer files over to an Amiga was through the printer port or the serial port via software for many of us. the ramdisk on the Amiga is limited so to be able to transfer any necessary files over you would strip out all the cack and transfer what was needed to the ramdisk and then from the ramdisk to a floppy. This method also applies to HDInstTools to allow you to install a hard drive or as in my case a CF card AND IT WORKS!

At the end of the day you are right about illegal characters being able to cause problems, when the Amiga came out it was problematic along with the long file names as windows 3.11 was out at the time. Of all the files I have downloaded I have yet to see an illegal character when I have opened an LHA file, there will be some I dare say but would I need to transfer any un-archived file file after I have installed a hard drive and used the files from fat95 and cfd to allow transferring via the PCMCIA CF method I really doubt it but you can still safely explore the contents of an LHA archive should you wish via Winrar.

I was lucky as I installed a hard drive in my Amiga years ago, but to get the files needed to format the CF card and then make up a method of transferring large amounts of stuff I had to use the method above. All the files and programs that were on my hard drive were copied over to the PCMCIA card and fat95 and cfd along with HDInstTools were put onto floppies, HDInstTools was added to a stripped down Workbench disk which was used to boot the machine when the CF card was fitted. After installing and formatting the CF drive, and installing fat95 and cfd, all the files on the PCMCIA CF card were copied over to the new drive and everything worked fine other than V36noclick which I may have deleted. as it couldn't be found.

So all in all a simple "If you use Allen's method , take care in case there are illegal characters in the LHA archive which may cause problems if extracted to a PC" would have sufficed rather than writing such a monumental description of "what if but maybe" that this has ended up being. life is hard enough without complications

[cosmicfrog]

oh protection Bits