Old crunchers for A500/WB1.3?

[Photon]

I've coded a little A500 / WB 1.3 program in AsmOne, and it's starting to get ready. But I'd like to make a crunched (compressed) executable.

I'm looking for a cruncher that takes a binary, non-relocated program, crunches it, producing an executable that decrunches it to a fixed chip address and starts it. (Like the old crunchers from '90-'91 did).

Can anyone point me to one of these old Amiga cruncher tools that works on WB 1.3?

[Duke]

Maybe here is something you can use: http://exotica.fix.no/utils/crunchers.html

[Photon]

Another treasure trove! *Bookmarked*

Thanks a lot!

[Frog]

another page http://www.amiga-stuff.com/crunchers-download.html

On the same site there's a page with mod-packers

[Photon]

Yeah, but they don't have NoisePacker, the best one.

I used SyncroPacker (made by a friend) before I made my own cruncher way back when, but I think I'm gonna go with Timecruncher 1.7, it's the only one that works under my config of the ones I d/l'd. I'd user Imploder, but it can only crunch already relocatable executables.

Anyway, thanks a bunch for these links!

[Frog]

They don't have Noisepacker !? http://www.amiga-stuff.com/modpackers-download.html
BTW ThePlayer6.1 is now The Replay packer/player perhaps Noisepacker is still the fatest for NoiseTracker only mods ?

[Photon]

Aha, you had to go to the site home to find it

I'm probably biased... I was in Phenomena, the group that made it, and we used it a LOT, and I remember it was great. Since then, I'm sure somebody made a better cruncher for mods, but if I recall correctly you could rinse out any unused data and bytepack the track data and replay it, packed. That is, not really crunching. You could crunch it afterwards to gain even more.

Someone should make a thing that actually PLAYS the song and strips away the ends of samples that are never heard because a new sound comes in the same channel before it reaches the end... lots of $2000 bytes long samples on the ST-XX disks, I remember... That's what the composer did before giving the mod to a coder if he was byte-concious. Preferably also shortens the loops without making them click... but that's tough...

[lloyd]

Are you talking about/looking for Powerpacker by a French guy? Think it was something like Nico Francios or something..... Not Niko Mc'Brain, he's the drummer for Iron Maiden.... lol!!

[Frog]

@ Proton : i think ThePlayer cut samples after loop . I see you've keep your "oldskool attitude"


BTW talk to Codetapper or any others members of WHDLoad about making an absolute code instead of something more friendly and you'll see what they think about this kind of oldskool stuff...

oh btw you should try Stonecracker (available on www talked above) which can pack executable, absolute and data. A friendly fast and powerful cruncher supposed to work under 1.3

...and yes, Noisepacker was a very good player in his time... ah Music Dream 1 & 2...

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Frog

BTW talk to Codetapper or any others members of WHDLoad about making an absolute code instead of something more friendly and you'll see what they think about this kind of oldskool stuff...

hehe. I'll compromise: if they make it relocatable I'll make an object...

What was nice about Music Dream was that sampled chord were displayed correctly on the keyboard! They must have stored some information in the module saying what chord it was.

[Photon]

As an interesting aside, all crunchers that support object files have a tendency to guru on my "A500 512k chip 512k fast" WinUAE setup. I seem to have success with PowerPacker now.

It's a tricky thing to decrunch stuff when you want everything in 512k of chip ram. Either you have to make sure the crunched file is loaded to the top of the memory, which won't happen unless the decruncher makes it so. OR hope that the OS loads it to a low enough chip address, so you can decrunch from the end of file to top of chip mem.

Otherwise it's not certain that it will fit, if the demo uses a large part of chip mem.

[Photon]

Haha PowerPacker just Guru'd :PPP

[Photon]

Got PowerPacker to crunch the demo by beefing up the RAM to max...Results: when I start the demo in 512k chip only (which is certainly possible for this demo) the decruncher exits to the command line without decrunching. When I give it 512kchip/512k "fast" it decrunches and hangs with an ugly copper.

It seems I have to give it more than 512k chip, which I don't, since I wanna run this on my standard A500.

Does anyone know a cruncher that does what I described above, when you have only 512k chip?

[Frog]

As i already say above, Stonecracker should do the job. You should also check Titanics Cruncher which decrunch the file while loading and thus need less memory.

[Photon]

Tried the Titanics cruncher, which certainly should have no problem decrunching to chipmem since it only has to allocate a diskbuffer at a time and decrunch that to all the rest of the beautiful chip mem that is available.

The results, however, were pretty much the same as for Powerpacker; with 512K chip only it hangs after decrunching the last bytes and with 512K chip/512K "fast" it hangs showing an ugly copper. With more than 512K chip, it starts correctly.

Will make one last try with Stonecracker, after that I'll make my own cruncher, thankyouverymuch.

[Photon]

Sorry, I installed the latest StoneCracker correctly, but it Guru'd as soon as I loaded a file. Also, it seemed to want a fixed decrunch address, which you wanted me to avoid? Please advise. In the meanwhile, I'm making my own OS-friendly, 512K chip only cruncher/decruncher. Grr.

[Frog]

Sorry but i've no precise idea. I don't know your config except that it should run on 512k chip, perhaps you lack some libraries which could explain why Stonecracker crash (imho it should say you need req.library for example). I see no reason for it to crash, i never got problem with it on my A500. Be sure you've the correct req.library for kick1.3, it's include in the archive. And as stated in the doc and from my own experience, StoneCracker can pack executable,absolute and data.

I suggest to do something OS-friendly if you want ppl to be able to see your demo on "modern" Amiga. Do it as you wish in fact... it's your demo. Perhaps it couldn't simply run on 512k chip if you crunch it ?

[Photon]

Yeah, but not having problems with it on your A500 doesn't mean it won't Guru out when emulated

As I said, I installed StoneCracker correctly.

Originally Posted by Frog

Perhaps it couldn't simply run on 512k chip if you crunch it ?

It is 330kb, and all of the data is in chip hunks. As I explained above, if the decruncher is OS-friendly and nicely allocates chip memory AFTER the crunched file is loaded to decrunch it in, there will probably not be enough room for both allocated chunks.

That's most probably why PowerPacker just exits on a 512K machine. When I add 512K "fast" ram, the decrunchers (Powerpacker and StoneCracker) skips chip mem since there's not enough room for the decrunched chunk, and allocates fast, decrunches it to there, and starts it in fast. Which explains the ugly copperlist for both crunchers (can't have custom chip stuff in fast).

When I have 1MB chip, there is enough chip ram for the big decrunch chunk, so both decrunchers work.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but that's the problem as I see it now.

(Working on my cruncher as we speak.)

[Photon]

Finished my cruncher, and it actually beats the best of all the crunchers I tried by 0.5%! Wee

I made it crunch the data backwards, so I can allocate chipmem and let the crunched data area and the decrunch data area overlap. Works great.

Just so I had full control over the allocation of memory, I separated the decrunch application from the crunched data file. That way I can allocate (almost) all chip mem, load the crunched data to the start of it, and decrunch to the end of it. It's all very system-friendly and has the added benefit that I can make a track loader if I ever make a megademo. You can also use the decrunch command for any program crunched with my cruncher, since all data needed is in the crunch file.

Oh, and by the way, it decrunches more than 4 times faster than any of the other crunchers.

Sorry for bragging a little, but I'm just so glad I made it work in 512k chip! If anyone is interested I might host the cruncher (when I've made a user-friendlier interface) and post a link here.


... crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch

[AmiGer]

Yes, I'm very interested... But a command line interface would also be ok.