The Fred Fish Collection 1.5

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Please leave the next line intact for update patches to be applied later! $VER: CFX 5.242 CFX BRAINFILE TECHNICAL INFORMATION ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ The information contained herein is not essential to the right-God-fearing operations of CFX, but it may explain some things about certain files and filetypes that might confuse you. Go ahead, read it... it's *free*... Brainfile information: ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Below are the CFX PRO 5 brainfile entries, along with a brief description of each. (The virus information provided here is only a cursory glance at each virus, provided by Richard and Brian Logan from Amiga Quarantine.) ** BRET_HAWNES FILE VIRUS: ** BUTONIC FILE VIRUS: File virus, this one displays a simple alert. It infects via the startup-sequence. ** CCCP LINK VIRUS: Boot and Link virus, when this one is found on the bootblock, you can guarantee that is has also infected at least one file. It decides what file to infect by using the keys on the rootblock. ** CENTURION (SMILY CANCER) LINK VIRUS: ** CHALLENGER: This covers both the English or German version of a program which was, amongst other things, submitted to Fred Fish for inclusion in his library. Both the English and German versions of Challenger contain a couple of little surprises. If you have the Challenger program on a disk, and you play it's stupid quiz, you will be awarded a score and the score data will be written out to your disk. The important aspect of this is your system time/date. If you last played the Challenger on the 24th of July, then this date is reflected in the data file's datestamp. If you play Challenger the next day (or any time after the 24th) the datestamp of the save file will be checked and Challenger will spit its little friends out. From all I can figure at the moment, what happens is this: your "c:setclock" file is moved to your devs:keymaps directory; a new file called "setclock" is created in your c: directory; a new file called "rca" is created in your devs:keymaps directory; somewhere along the line, a file called "devs:keymaps/guy" is also created. We think that the "guy" file is the end result of the infection. Therefore the Challenger programs are in effect "vectors" or carriers of the nasties. Even if this is all the Challenger programs ever do, I'd kill them off pretty darn quick... ** CHALLENGER RCA: This is one of the resulting files from a Challenger infection. This file is usually found in the devs:keymaps directory. It is usually crunched with the Imploder short-root library method. Its crunched filesize is 5328 bytes. CFX knows this crunched or uncrunched, as with all of the viruses listed here. Usually, executing this program locks up your system, but this is the file that, when executed "correctly" or at the correct time, will produce yet another file called "devs:keymaps/guy". I don't know what the "guy" file does, but I bet it isn't nice. If anyone gets infected with Challenger and finds a "guy" file, then please DMS the infected disk, or just straight copy the "guy" file and send it to me! ** CHALLENGER SETCLOCK: This is another of the "tricks" that Challenger performs. This is the setclock replacement that isn't a setclock. This file is also usually crunched with the Imploder short-root library method. The file in crunched form is 4884 bytes long. What happens when this file is executed seems to be this: the Challenger "setclock" appears to call the "devs:keymaps/a" file. The "a" file is your old "c:setclock" file. this is a type of execution "relay" which will appear to execute your setclock ok, without causing any problems. BUT, when the date is the 24-Jul-??, you will notice that calling "c:setclock" causes a blinking of your CLI screen. It appears that the "setclock" file opens an Intuition screen, and then calls the "devs:keymaps/rca" file which then (if in a good mood) may infect your disk with the "guy" file and then write a load of Deutsch crap to the screen. Again, if anyone has a copy of the "guy" file, then please get it to me! Thankyou... ** DISASTER-MASTER FILE VIRUS: File virus, infects via the startup-sequence and displays a simple alert. ** IRQ LINK VIRUS: Link virus, this virus can be reluctant to stay memory resident, but once they do, they infect files quite easily. Can cause gurus with infected files. ** JEFF FILE VIRUS: File virus, a close relative to Butonic, sometimes called Butonic 3.00. Infects via the startup-sequence. When the file is written to the disk, it may have one of eleven filenames. ** RETURN OF THE LAMER DISK-VALIDATOR VIRUS: Disk-validator virus, very similar to Saddam, possible by the same writers. ** REVENGE OF THE LAMER 1 FILE VIRUS: ** REVENGE OF THE LAMER 2 FILE VIRUS: File viruses, both infect via the startup-sequence and are both very destructive. ** SADDAM-HUSSEIN DISK-VALIDATOR VIRUS: Disk-validator virus, the first of its type, and a real pain to kill. ** TERRORISTS FILE VIRUS: File virus, this performs the same functions as the TTV1/BGS9 virus, but displays a different picture. ** TRAVELING JACK 1 LINK VIRUS ** TRAVELING JACK 2 LINK VIRUS: Link viruses, uses a vector in dos.library to stay resident, but is killed by a reset. Links onto anything. ** TTV1 (BGS9) FILE VIRUS: Practically the same as Terrorists, but for the different picture. ** XENO LINK VIRUS: Link viruses, links onto absolutely everything! Stays resident via vectors in dos.library. Any program that uses the infected vectors runs the chance of infecting other files. This is why CFX doesn't run while XENO is active in memory. 3D-PROFESSIONAL OBJECT: A data file used by the rendering package 3D-PROFESSIONAL. Simple really *:-) ACTION REPLAY FREEZE DATA: The Action Replay cartridge, when activated, spits out compacted memory chunks to your disk. This file contains active game/program data, all crunched up into a gibbering mess. Needs a loader to get it back into the Amiga's memory in a meaningful way. CFX relates to this filetype as a data-archive, since it's non-executable compacted data. ALCH: A non-meaningful address-cruncher. A typical address-cruncher, and not decrunchable to boot! AMIGA FONT BITMAP: Inside your FONTS directory there are three different types of objects. Firstly there are the FONTS home directories, where the FONT BITMAP FILES live. Thirdly, and lastly, are the FONT FUNCTION FILES. Inside the FONTS HOME directory you will find (usually) some files called numbers (the numbers tell you how big the font is SUPPOSED to be.) These files are the BITMAP files that explain (among other things) the shape of of this FONT. CFX picks up most of these BITMAP files, but some aren't chosen rightly... AMIGA FONT FUNCTION: Found inside your FONTS directory. These files tell the Amiga all about the font, including different styles etc. CFX appears to pick up all of these filetypes... AMOS BASIC FILE: These files, unlike most other BASICs, aren't in ASCII format, and have a special format unto themselves. CFX knows all of these ones... AMOS ICON FILE: AMOS creates its own icon types. I don't know much about AMOS, so I can't really stoop to great descriptive prose explaining these ones!.. AMOS MUSIC FILE: Again, standard AMOS music file output. Self descriptive... AMOS PART-CRUNCHER: I have coined this name, since no one else could figure what the hell it was. This cruncher might even be included in the Amos package for some reason. This appears to be an address-cruncher which allows you to join all of your compiled Amos bits into a whopping big executable file so that you can include the thing on a compilation disk and say to your friends "Look, AMOS is roolly fast, see?" AMOS SAMPLE/SOUND FILE: Special AMOS sound sample format. Practically standard samples, but for a different header. The AMOS boys should go for a slot in the IFF market, as they have solid filetypes to back them in an argument... AMOS SAMPLE/WORK FILE: More AMOS specific output... AMOS SPRITE FILE: AMOS sprite format file... ANC: OK, we've made it to a cruncher. The ANC cruncher was an early comer to the Amiga, not long after the crunching market opened. The ANC isn't a remarkable cruncher, its a mixture of a RELOCATOR, and an ADDRESS cruncher, and generally should be decrunched (See PowerPacker docs...) ANSI TEXT: On pain of death, I promised never to allow CFX to even think about ANSI texts. Then I received a letter from David Dustin, Assistant Manager of KAOS Productions, New Zealand. This letter changed my life... No really, it caused me to re-schedule an entire afternoon. David had a few interesting ideas about CFX (including a bug-report *:-) which have all been fixed. One of which was the ANSI-text thingummy. CFX now checks specifically for certain character occurrences. CFX does *NOT* and never will just guess at a filetype. It's either YES or NO. Therefore, since ANSI texts can contain any bloody character in the Ascii alphabet (0-255) CFX cannot be completely correct in its findings all of the time. It is generally right, however. Some of the more ludicrous PC ANSI text files may fail sometimes, maybe. APE ARCHIVE: Umm, thanks to someone I received this archiver, and tested it, and added it to CFX's brain, and promptly forgot everything about it. I don't even have a copy of it anymore. Sorry. Just guessing, I'd say that this filetype is boring. ARC ARCHIVE: One of the first archivers to make it to the Amiga, if not the first, it was welcomed to BBS users and data archivers alike. Useful then, archaic and out-of-touch now. Best unarchive this filetype and hit it with LZ, LHARC, LHA or ZIP... CFX knows most versions of this archive type. CFX classes these types as "-5.0", "5.0" and "5.0+" which are, respectively: pre version 5; version 5; post version 5. Surprise, surprise! ARJ ARCHIVE: A new archiver to the Amiga platform, originally Un*x or I*M based. Fairly good compression algorithm, not too shabby in the speed department. ARP STYLE COMMAND: AKA "stack-requesting-program" or "program containing resident tag". What this type of command is, is confusing. No, really. This program type contains a special little "tag" which tells the Amiga loading the program how much "stack" this program needs to run correctly. The Amiga then attempts to allow this much stack to the program. Certain compilers/assemblers will alow you to manufacture programs in this style, as was done with the anachronistic ARP package commands, which were after all, quite squeegy. ART DEPARTMENT DEFAULT FILE: When exiting the new Art Department Pro, the program saves its current configuration setup to your ADPRO: assigned device/directory. This is THAT file!!! ASCII TEXT: ASCII text is.... ASCII text!???? BAMIGA/TKT ADDRESS: This appears to be a special cruncher written for the occasion. This originated from a special unison between the top Belgian cracking group, BAMIGA, and the UK's top crack house, The Kent Team. You probably won't find this one around much now, as the TKT people got sprung at a big copy-party a while back. They have rejoined, but no new cruncher has surfaced as yet. This cruncher is usually found on cracked games, and is a quick and dirty compacter. Retains the usual ADDRESS-cruncher's drawbacks, which are: - they MUST decrunch to a fixed spot in memory, often causing memory problems (or just straight-out Amigacide.) - Lack of portability to other "non-standard" Amigas. BMP 24-BIT IMAGE: Umm, these files contain pictures with 24-bits of colour per pixel, 8 bytes each for R-G-B. Umm, generally an MS-DOS platform picture type, and generally used under the <squirm> Windows environment. BOOTBACK BOOTBLOCK: "BootBack" is a little program which allows you to save a disk's bootblock to a device so that if the bootblock of a disk gets screwed by a virus or cruel diskdrive, you can restore the bootblock back again! This idea is old and stilted. Even I have written one of these types of programs. Anyhow, this filetype is nothing but a saved bootblock, with a special header. Be cautious before installing this unknown bootblock to your floppy disk however... BOOTX BOOTBLOCK LIBRARY: This executable file contains the current expanse of known bootblocks for the program BootX. This library is updated every now and then by the author. BOOTX BRAIN FILE: This non-executable file contains the current expanse of knowledge for the BootX anti-virus program. Don't delete this file if you intend to use BootX on your system, unless this version of the brain file is old/redundant. BYTEKILLER ADDRESS (OLD & NEW): This cruncher was one of the first address-crunchers around, and is still used today, even though its crunching depth and speed let it down terribly Used mainly for demos, and cracked games, it too, causes memory problems whilst decrunching. Best to get rid of this filetype. Generally "address" crunched filetypes are difficult, if not impossible, to decrunch to their original structure... CALIGARI OBJECT: The BIG and expensive solid-modeller, Caligari uses these data files to store objects, so that they may be stored and rendered later on. Why do all Caligari pictures look *so* greeeeeeen?? CALIGARI SCENE: After you've designed your bi-coloured alternately-patched gridworks and tinted-chromium spheroids [footnote 1], you can incorporate them into a SCENE, which you can save out and render later. The scebe file describes the current "universe" that the user has designed. CALIGARI CLNS: OK, you've got me there. I didn't have the $1200 spare to go out and buy Caligari to check out what these files were. If anyone can send me e-mail or snail-mail and describe exactly what these filetypes are, then they will receive a FREE registered version of CFX! [footnote 2] CALIGARI LIGHT-SOURCE: Jesus, do these Caligari guys ever have any spare time to themselves? What do they do for fun? Design new filetypes? I think RobotMan's evil twin brother Bruce is behind all this... OK, these filetypes describe "lamp" parameters for Caligari's render-engine. Hmm. CALIGARI POLY-OBJECT: Someone with a fairly rancid sense of humour would say something like: a model of a Norwegian Blue (You have to think about it!) [footnote 3]) Umm, your guess is as good as mine. Something to do with an object, a wheel-barrow and a duck. CCS/PHR ADDRESS: Came about after a unison of the two crack houses ComputerBrains Cracking Service and someone or other. Another fine example of how not to treat your files. Typically ADDRESS-cruncher in action. COMPACKER: Another of the inimitable address-crunchers. Completely useless crunching algorithm, completely useless user-interface, completely useless. Not decrunchable, as usual. CRUNCH MASTER: Another poxy cruncher with practically no use left in this world. Why do these people bother??? Causes the usual memory fragmentation and slow run-time of the crunched file. Typical... CYGNUSED AREXX COMMAND FILE: This is the file that Ced save out after you make a few ARexx command installations in Ced. CYGNUSED DEFAULT FILE: The default file saved out as your default configuration for a particular document type, through Ced. CYGNUSED MACRO FILE: The file containing all of those cute little sign-off macros that the moderator hates so much, through Ced. DEFJAM 3.2 ADDRESS: God, this is annoying! You think that you have got all of the DefJam crunchers countered, and then they release twenty more! I'm not joking, this group writes a new cruncher for every game they crack, and silly people tend to pick up their crunchers an then use them on decent files. Very little difference between this ADDRESS-cruncher and the rest of them. Same memory corrupting problems... Oh, and there are also the "pro-decrunch" versions of the DefJam crunchers as well. The pro-decrunchers allow specific DMA registers to be set upon uncrunching of the data. DEFJAM2 ADDRESS: Yes, another one... DEFJAM ADDRESS (x5): I'm being conservative when I estimate 5 different ones of these. CFX can pick up about 9 of them, depending on the season... DIMP < V2 ARCHIVE: The older version of the executable Disk-Imploder tracker. I could never get this version to work properly, so it went completely untested. This filetype is overlayed. DIMP ARCHIVE: A file of this type is the output from the Disk-Imploder tracker, in data (binary/non-executable) format. Standard through all versions of DImp (so far.) DIMP V2+ ARCHIVE: The new version of the executable Disk-Imploder, overlayed filetype. This works well, and is fun to use. Doesn't appear to crunch as well as DiskMasher, however. DIRECTOR ANIM: Remember Joel Hagen's RGB animation? You know, the one that won the Badge-Killer comp. in the States a few years back?? Well, he did that animation on the Director system, and this is the filetype that it outputs. DIRECTORY-OPUS CONFIGURATION FILE: Contains your custom setup for Jon Potter's excellent Directory Opus utility. This filetype is output via the DOPUS Config program. CFX now finds both old and new versions of this configuration file. DISK-MASHER STANDARD ARCHIVE: A new disk-tracker on the scene, which boasts better crunching and decrunching times than all of the rest. I have now witnessed the "earth-shatteringness" of DMS, and I'm suitably impressed... Cf. LHWARP DISK-MASHER ENCRYPTED ARCHIVE: The same as above, except that the archive/tracker file has been encrypted for privacy reasons. Cf. LHWARP DRAW4D CLIP: Again I have no idea. Well, I do have ideas, it's just that they aren't particularly correct. Sorry. DRAW4D FONT: Since DRAW4D is a solid-modeller/renderer, I'd say that this is a font file for DRAW4D. DRAW4D DATA: See above, only interchange the word "font" with "data". DXF AUTOCAD OBJECT: Data object/model for the DXF AUTOCAD design package. ELECTRONIC-WARPLOAD: Ha! There's a funny story behind this one, but I won't tell it to you. All I will say, is ask Mike Hansell (FVS) about it. This program apparently speeds up disk-loading, and is quite popular on PD disks, and cover-disks (esp. from the U.K.) I found this file to completely wreck my floppies after extended use, so I would be wary of it. FAST-FILESYSTEM BOOTBLOCK: CFX knows this file when you are spying on a directory containing GRABBED bootblocks... FLASH PACKER/RS1: Another repulsive ADDRESS/RELOCATOR-cruncher, which does nothing but knacker your memory, and make you furious when your Amiga gurus. The RS1 cruncher is practically identical to the Flash Packer, as it was supposedly written by the same person. I always thought of this cruncher as the "RSI" as in REPETITIVE STRAIN INJURY, but I've since thought otherwise. I now call it the "RS1" as in RED SECTOR ONE. This is a fairly generic address-cruncher, and is so ineffectual as to be useless. Generally not decrunchable however... GADTOOLSBOX DATA: GadToolsBox is an excellent program for helping you to design those excellent looking 3d gadgets etc. under AmigaDOS 2.0, with the help of the GadTools.library. This is obviously ouput from GTB. GIF (COMPUSERVE) PICTURE: The COMPUSERVE GIF picture format, as once used almost exclusively on the IBM PC. Now that people are trying to get the PC files over to the Amiga, start watching this file format creeping into your directories. The only thing wrong with this file format is that its not IFF, or remotely interesting. Well, it is interesting when you start getting GIF87 pics mixed up with GIF89 pics. CFX now knows all sorts of GIFS. GREMLIN DISK ZAP ARCHIVE: A funny little disk-tracker handed to me from Brett O'Callaghan. 'Twas interesting to read of its claims to be the fastest and tightest of the disk-trackers. I think that LHWARP would have something to say about that. Not a particularly good tracker, or fast for that matter... GSG COMPRESSOR: A compressed filetype generated by a file called GSG Compressor. GSG was written by Giles Goddard, and is a pre-run decompressor. this means that before you can run a program compressed by GSG, you must decompress it. This is a system that is very much alike to the system employed by the people who wrote the ANC cruncher. I cannot see why the bother. Surely, if the game is good enough, why not multi-part the game to start with? HIGH PRESSURE CRUNCHER: This cruncher has two crunching methods: executable and unlink. Executable is a straight address (I think) crunch but without stripping any relocation/hunk info from the file to be crunched. Unlink is an address crunch but the HPC strips all hunk info from the to-be-crunched file, and fixes the data to a specific address. The "fixing" of code to a specific address is a standard "address-crunch" option. HQC: One of the first cracking/spreading houses to write their own semi-decent cruncher, even though it was pathetically loose in crunching. Quite a lot of early Amiga files were bent with this cruncher, but nowadays it seems to have gone away (thank goodness...) HQC COMPRESSOR: A minor re-work of the above, with no redeeming features whatsoever. It caused memory fragmentation, but it was a good attempt... IFF-8SVX SOUND: Interchange File Format sound sample. Typically (and originally) formed by an 8-bit sampler, and is one of the 4 original Electronic Arts IFF standards. The acronym 8SVX comes from "8-bit Sampled VoX"... IFF-ACBM BITMAP: A silly bitmap standard which tends to be used by BASIC programmers. The acronym stands for "Amiga Contiguous BitMap" and is a third party Public Registered IFF FORM, for AmigaBasic... IFF-AIFF APPLE-AUDIO IFF: This is one of the "port-over" jobs from the Apple computer. For 1 to 32 bit audio samples. Originally (I think?) formed with the MacIntosh in mind (they thought that it had the home-pc-audio market cornered.) Apparently NOT subject to standard Amiga IFF listing... IFF-ANBM ANIM-BITMAP: An original third party Electronic Arts Deluxe Video "ANimated BitMap" FORM, a piece of history... IFF-AVCF AmigaVision: A new IFF filetype supported by AmigaVision. IFF-BANK MIDI DATA DUMP: SoundQuest Editor/Librarian format for MIDI-system exclusive dump... IFF-BXRC BOOTX RECOGNITION: This filetype is an additional module of information to be added to the BootX anti-virus system, by Peter Stuer. IFF-BXCF BOOTX CONFIG: This filetype is the default preference file saved out by the BootX anti-virus system, by Peter Stuer. IFF-CAT: Don't get confused by this slight misnomer. A CAT is a group of IFF forms. I included it in this format for completeness. IFF-CDAF COMPRESSED DATA ARCHIVE: This is a new IFF type which has been designed to specifically take care of output from archive and compression programs. I think the first program to use this is the "Shrink" compressor, written by Matthias Meixner. Dont get confused by the fact that Shrink, and Shrink alone, uses this filetype. When other compressors/archivers are written/re-written, the writers may opt to utilise the CDAF as a standard. Standardisation is the goal of the IFF. Please note that CFX will (currently) only report the fact that it has found an IFF-CDAF file, and NOT a Shrink archive. CFX only checks that it has found a known IFF, and reports as such. Time permitting, I will place a secondary check in CFX so as to report WHICH archiver/compressor actually used this CDAF file for storage. IFF-CL00 CLOANTO ITALIA TEXT: This FORM is the PRIVATE output of a certain large word-processor/desktop-publisher, called Cloanto Italia. This FORM is a PRIVATE REGISTERED THIRD PARTY FORM... IFF-CTLG Catalogue: This FORM is a datatype which allows the "stacking" of groups of catalogue information into the one file. Apart from this, I don't know much about this one. C= appears to be implementing heaps of new stuff lately, along with new stuff for WorkBench 2.1 et al, but why should I know any of that? I've only been asking for C= developer status for years... IFF-DMCS DELUXE MUSIC SCORE: The raw SMUS output from the Deluxe Music Construction Kit, loadable ONLY by DMCS... IFF-DR2D VECTOR GRAPHICS FORMAT: Apparently a new IFF standard for desktop publishing et al. I think Pagestream may now even be using this, but I don't know for sure. This form allows storage of texts and graphics together. IFF-DTRK ADRUM PERCUSSION TRACK: Third party IFF FORM belonging to the drum machine program ADRUM. The acronym stands for "Drum TRacK"... IFF-FANT FANTAVISION MOVIE: A rather obscure animation output FORM, from the equally obscure FANTAVISION. has this been buried yet? I hope so... IFF-FNTR RASTER FONT: Umm, as it says, man! IFF-FNTV VECTOR FONT: Like, check the above. IFF-FTXT TEXT: Standard IFF text format file. Output from some editors and word-processors. IFF-GSCR GENERAL SCORE: Umm, a general score IFF, like music! IFF-HEAD FLOW IDEA PROCESSOR: The FORM output of the FLOW ideas processor by New Horizons Software... IFF-IAND IMAGINE ANIM DATA: The brilliant new Imagine raytracer from Impulse outputs this IFF form. This is actual animation data. IFF-IANM IMAGINE ANIM DEFN: This is like above, except that it is a definition for a particular animation file. This file describes what the anim data is supposed to do. IFF-ILBM IMAGE: Everyone knows this one. The acronym stands for "InterLeaved BitMap" and is one of the original descendants of the EA IFF document. This is the standard output of many a paint-program... IFF-INST INSTRUMENT: Umm, a general IFF instrument, probably used with samples. IFF-ISTG IMAGINE STAGE: This IFF form describes where all of your objects must go, and what they must do, inside an Imagine scene. Almost synonymous with Sculpt's SCENE files. IFF-LWOB LIGHTWAVE OBJECT: Did Allen Hastings write LightWave? My brain hurts. It's 3:39am and I cannot remember anything. LightWave is another high-end solid-modeller/render-engine. I think this might even go with NewTek's Toaster? Jees, I dunno. Don't pick on me, I'm stuffed. Sorry Allen. IFF-MIDI FORMAT: The MIDI FORM, as proposed by Circum Design... IFF-PBM VGA IMAGE: The I*M version of Deluxe Paint II (Extended) outputs this filetype. It's just a semi-compatible type of FORM ILBM, only in 256-colour VGA. IFF-PDEF DPRINT PAGE DEFINITION: Definition FORM from Deluxe Print. This FORM is apparently a PRIVATE 3RD PARTY REG'D FORM. The acronym is self-explanatory... IFF-PGTB PRG TRACEBACK IMAGE: The ProGram TraceBack FORM as proposed by John Toebes of SAS/LATTICE, so as to have instant information about a program, or a "diagnostic dump image", after a program linked the traceback capabilities crashes. The PGTB file will then be written after/during the crash, and will contain specific information about the machine registers at the time of the crash. I actually got Blink to spit out a PGTB one day... IFF-PICS MACINTOSH PICTURE: Another platform's IFF type. This time from the A**le Mac. I'm not too sure whether you can do anything with these filetypes on the Amiga, but then again, the Amiga probably eats these for breakfast. IFF-PLBM -- OBSOLETE: Apparently a now obsolete Packed Leaved BitMap picture file. We couldn't find any real information on this one though. If you find one, send it to us! IFF-PREF (OS 2.x): A bizarre and cunning plan from Commodore. Why not save all of your system-configuration into tiny little parts, each of which is a part of your preferences?? That's what they did. For example, your pointer's image is now stored as an IFF brush (tiny as it is!) Third party programs can also join in the fun, and have their configs saved to the ENV-ARCHIVE directory. Want a CFX IFF config?? IFF-PTCH: IFF PaTCH filetype, as used by software distributors/authors. This filetype is generated using a program called "LCompare" which is available to registered SAS/C owners on request. I recently got one on my 5.10b update disk from the SAS Institute. When used in conjunction with "LPatch", the patch will add parts to your older files, and update them there and then. IFF-RGB4 4-BIT RGB PIXEL INFO: 3RD PARTY REG'D bitmap FORM. Contains standard BMHD chunk, except that its stored differently... IFF-RGB8 8-BIT RGB PIXEL INFO: As above... IFF-RGBN IMPULSE GRAPHICS: This appears to Impulses' own IFF form for 18 or 24 bit images (or is it 12 or 9??) Can't remember, but it's a graphics format, maybe similar to the above. IFF-SAMP DISSIDENT'S SAMPLE: 16 or 32 bit SAMPle standard as proposed by the DISSIDENTS, designed to work cohesively with the MIDI standard... IFF-SC3D SCULPT 3D/4D SCENE: Unregistered 3RD PARTY FORM, used by Dr. Eric Graham's SCULPT 3D/4D to describe a "3-D SCENE"... IFF-SHAK SHAKESPEARE PUBLISHER: A PRIVATE FORM containing embedded ILBM's. This is used by Shakespeare Publisher, by Infinity Software. IFF-SMUS MUSICAL SCORE: Simple MUsical Score FORM, one of the original EA proposals... IFF-SYTH SOUNDQUEST MIDI: "SoundQuest Master Librarian FORM for MIDI system-exclusive driver"... IFF-TDDD TURBO SILVER MODEL: FORM for ray-tracing program Turbo Silver by Impulse... IFF-TERM PREF (OS 2.x): One of the third-party IFF prefs forms talked about above. This one belongs to the terminal program 'TERM' by Olaf 'Olsen' Barthel. Not a bad program, but it don't like ANSI much (but then again, neither do I.) IFF-TEXT PLAIN TEXT: Umm, perhaps a plain-text IFF form?? IFF-USCR UHURU SCORE: Another of the IFF musical score forms. IFF-UVOX UHURU MAC SCORE: As above, except that it is specifically for that giant of machines, the MCA, sorry Mac. IFF-VDEO DELUXE-VIDEO: This (apparently undocumented?) FORM is from the Deluxe Video program, of which I know nothing about, except that it stores its video (movie?) outputs in this format... IFF-WORD PROWRITE TEXT: Another output type that I don't know anything about, as I don't use programs that don't work, and that cost more with every bug you find. This (apparently) is the IFF FORM that Prowrite uses to output your precious documents... ILBM MODULO CRUNCHER (TTW): If you know of the "Imploder" file cruncher, then you know who the author of this program is: Albert Jan Brouwer. This guy can really throw the machine code around. This output type is from his program called "ILBMMODULOCRUNCHER" or something like that. It takes an ILBM picture file and splits its bitplanes, and then crunches each bitplane using an OK number cruncher. The output of this program is then stored and can't be used until someone runs the VIEWER program over it, and it shows your crunched picture. Slightly above average crunching of picture files makes this program interesting, but little else. Oh, by the way, the TTW stands for "The Third Wave" (which is a software group (of some kind))... IMAGEMASTER PREFERENCES: The default, or "preferences" file output by ImageMaster, the image manipulation package. IMPLODER 4 L-XLIB NORMAL: The new version of Imploder (number 4) now supports a cunning new library-imploded implementation which is slightly longer than the old Imploder 3 XLIB version. This "LONG-XLIB" version appends a new library-loading routine to the uncrunch-header, which, if it can't find the explode.library already resident (in the liblist) complains by putting up a console/message. You really should make sure that the explode-library is already resident by running "LOADLIB" in your startup-sequence, before running XLIB crunched stuff. IMPLODER 4 NORMAL: The standard Imploder 4 uncrunch-header is slightly different from previous versions, so is not uncrunchable by previous versions. This version no longer supports PROTECTED Imploder filetypes, but will uncrunch PROTECTED Imploded files of previous versions. IMPLODER DATA (FIMP): This is output from the data-cruncher called File IMPloder. It is not necessarily data crunched from an executable file, it can be data of any kind (not unlike the PowerPacker data cruncher). The crunch rates of this cruncher do not reflect upon the brilliant crunching algorithm that A. J. B. used, but it's not too bad. I'm not a real fan of this however. IMPLODER FILE (NORMAL): Without doubt the premier file-cruncher to be found on the Amiga. It uses a GREAT crunching algorithm, which gets more bytes to crunch than anything else. The IMPLODER program crunches your file and stores it in an unconservative output file of this type. The reason I say unconservative, is that the output file is made of (a minimum) of 5 hunks. These hunks are mostly BSS hunks so that the program can expand the BSS area and have an already reserved spot in the Amiga's memory for decrunching. The NORMAL in its name describes the crunching method used on the original file, and that you can DECRUNCH the file, so that you can have it back running nice and quickly with no decrunch times! IMPLODER seems to decrunch faster than just about everything else, and it certainly crunched better than everything (at the moment) although I have heard that the people who wrote DMS (DiskMaSher) have written a very good file cruncher that will give this IMPLODER a run for its money. The sad thing about IMPLODER is that everybody has got a copy of it, but it was never (more rumours!) legally sold anywhere in the world. Apparently the mob who held the license for it went under (read: bankrupt) before the program could be sold. Also, apparently, because the license went down with the company (DSI, the one's who did Marauder) anyone can hold a copy of IMPLODER without fear of retribution. (I wouldn't think so however)... IMPLODER FILE (OVERLAY NORMAL): If you were a fervent user of crunchers from the year dot on the Amiga, then you will probably have tried running The New Master's Master Cruncher 1 over the top of Dpaint, or some other "OVERLAYED" program. You would also have failed. This is because of the bizarre file-structure of overlayed files. They are usually overlayed so that the entire program doesn't have to load into memory, only the bits that it currently need are loaded. When a new bit is need, more is loaded etc. The annoying thing about overlayed files is that they are usually ENORMOUS, so why not crunch them? Well, no-one had figured out how to crunch overlayed files, until IMPLODER. IMPLODER would load a portion of the overlayed file into memory and then crunch that portion only. Then it would append the various "layers" of the remaining parts of the program to the bottom of the crunched bit. Very tricky stuff this. This method did allow for some reduction in size of the original program, but delayed loading times awfully. The "NORMAL" again specifies that IMPLODER can DECRUNCH this type of file, so there is a way out... IMPLODER FILE (OVERLAY PROTECTED): This filetype is of the usual IMPLODER overlayed type, but it is also PROTECTED. Nothing will be able to DECRUNCH this filetype (except for the new PowerPacker, version 3) So to cut a long story short, if you want this kind of filetype decrunched, then you have to buy PowerPacker 3-4, or get your hands on the excellent Imploder 4.x, which will now decrunch it's previous versions' protected filetypes. IMPLODER FILE (PROTECTED): Again, a standard IMPLODED file except that it is protected. See IMPLODER OVERLAY PROTECTED... IMPLODER FILE (PURE/NORMAL): This filetype is output by IMPLODER if the file that crunched has its PURE bit set (see the CLI "PROTECT" command). IMPLODER crunches the program and attaches a special "PURE" decruncher-header to the file, which allows it to be made RESIDENT, if so wished. This would increase the loading time of the file, but with decrunch time taken into account, the speed increase would probably be negligible. Your memory would also suffer... IMPLODER FILE (PURE/PROTECTED): The same as above except that the program has also been protected. See IMPLODER OVERLAY PROTECTED... IMPLODER S-XLIB (NORMAL): This is a new concept altogether. This is a standard crunched IMPLODER filetype, except that no REAL decruncher-header has been prepended to the crunched program. Instead, a little library-loader has been prepended, and the library is then run to decrunch the file. This save about 600 bytes from the secondary crunched IMPLODER file, but unless you are squeezing LOTS of disks, then you can do without this one. This filetype can be decrunched with IMPLODER. To run this type of file, however, you need the EXPLODE.LIBRARY to be in your LIBS: directory. The S-XLIB stands for "Short eXplode LIBrary". IMPLODER S-XLIB (PROTECTED): The same for the above except that the crunched program has been protected, so as to disallow decrunching. IRCAM "ACADEMIC" SAMPLE: A sound sample filetype used on other platforms, but now readily converted to something the Amiga can read and comprehend. I'm not sure about the "IRCAM" bit, perhaps someone who knows will email me with some info? ISC NORMAL: This compressor contains 3 different modes of compression. They can be apparently be used singularly or together. The NORMAL pass is pass 1 of the full compression that the ISC performs. This pass gives the least savings in bytes. The ISC is an address cruncher, and suffers from the same politically-incorrect memory-mismanagement. ISC COMPARER: Pass two of the ISC compressor. Better byte savings than ISC NORMAL, but not much. ISC BITSTREAM: The third and final pass of the ISC compressor. This pass is a lot better than the others, but together they all do better than not. Figure that one out. JOHN_DOE (CRUNCHED BUT UNKNOWN x 5): All of these crunchers are of the ADDRESS-CRUNCHER type, that is, that they decrunch the program to a FIXED place in ram, and rarely do any of them check to see if they are going to steamroll any other program in the process. For this reason, it is best to avoid the use of this type of cruncher if you want to feel safe, unless you are having a "demo-viewing" session, where it doesn't really matter if your machine crashes or not. But for serious usage, files crunched with these crunchers should be treated as lepers... JPEG (JFIF) IMAGE: The Joint Photographic Experts Group is the standards group formed by the CCITT and ISO when investigating how best to standardise image compression. JPEG images may be either lossy or lossless. The JPEG standard contains spiecs for lossy and lossless, so don't immediately think of "lossy" when you hear the term JPEG. The JPEG has (apparently) decided on the JFIF image type as a standard. Technically speaking, lossy compression works in three stages: Discrete Cosine Transformation (DCT); Coefficient Quantisation; and Lossless Compression (a Huffman based predictive/adaptive compression.) Aren't you glad you read this? JPEG is designed to be used on raw image data (ie. real 24 bit images) and not on pre-quantised images, like Amiga HAM files. So, don't JPEG HAM files. It kills them! JPEG (HSI-X) IMAGE: See above. Note that (I think) JFIF is now the JPEG standard. HSI-X was (is?) the standard used by the PC Handmade Software company in their Alchemy program. The HSI-X output is not compatible with the JFIF output (at least it wasn't when I tried it ages ago!) JR-COMM DATA FILE: This filetype is output by JRComm as a type of configuration file. This is for loading your saved configs into JRComm at a later stage. LATTICE-SAS/C LINKER LIB: This file is a specific filetype developed by Lattice-SAS/C to complement their fantastic compiler. Each of these files contains built-in definitions and data which can be called from a main program. LHA SELF-EXTRACTING ARCHIVE: See below description on LHA[RC]. Stefan Boberg's LHA archiver/compressor allows the manufacture of self-extracting archives, which makes life very easy for those of us to lazy to learn the "x" command in LHA... LHARC CRUNCHED ARCHIVE: This is the standard filetype from the output of the LHARC data archiver. The data in the archive has received a reduction in size, (has been crunched) thus the CRUNCHED ARCHIVE part of the explanation. This filetype can be decrunched. This is probably the most popular archiver used on the Amiga today, as it has relatively good speed, and OK unarchiving times. Thanks must go to Mike West for pointing out the difference between CRUNCHED LHARC files, and DECRUNCHED. CFX PRO 5 now also picks ALL types of LH compression, including STORED, LH1, LH5, and anything else that may come along. Also, there is apparently an old (??) compression type called LZ4 compression. CFX PRO 5 also knows most of these filetypes. Note: LH5 has (in my opinion!) become the Amiga standard, mainly because of the work of Jonathon Forbes (LZ) and Stefan Boberg (LHA). Of course, it would be remiss of me to mention my opinion as to which is the better archiver/compressor, wouldn't it? [footnote 4] LHWARP (DISK-TRACKER) ARCHIVE: This archiver filetype is received from output from the LHWARP tracker. This is archived data taken straight from the disk, track by track (hence tracker) and then (usually) crunched and stored in a file for modem transfer. I don't think that this one can encrypt your data, but I could be wrong... Cf. DMS MACINTOSH HCOM SAMPLE: Yet another sound sample filetype which is creeping its way into our presences. MANDELVROOM JULIA DATA (K. CLAGUE): This Kevin Clague filetype is for use in his excellent program for Mandelbrot freaks, MANDELVROOM. This is of course a data file for a Julia set... MANDELVROOM MANDEL DATA (K. CLAGUE): This is another of Kevin's data output types from his MANDELVROOM program. This particular data type is for a Mandelbrot set... MASTER CRUNCHER 3 ADDRESS: The second of the Master Crunchers to appear on the Amiga. (I say second, 'cos I've never seen, nor heard, of Master Cruncher 2??) This Function of the MC3 was to crunch a block of executable data and fix it to a certain address. This had all of the address-cruncher problems also, so it didn't get much use, so you probably won't get to see many of these filetypes. MASTER CRUNCHER 3 DATA: The MC3 data cruncher was invariably useless, and very few people tended to use it. I think they would have preferred "ARC" over this type, as it possibly wasn't trusted. I've never personally come across this filetype in all of my testing (apart from my own test data) except for one strange occurrence: The data type of Soundtracker songs is almost identical to the data type of MC3's data crunch format. In fact I'm quite sure that the two are same. Someone grabbed the MC3 data cruncher code from the MC3 file, and whacked it into their Soundtracker. Oh, well, each to his own... MASTER CRUNCHER 3 RELOCATOR: This cruncher was definitely better at crunching than its cousin, TNM's Master Cruncher 1, although it apparently caused SO MUCH memory fragmentation that its use was discarded quickly. Sounds like another filetype to avoid like the plague. The crunched files from this cruncher could be decrunched, if you can get the MC3 to run for more than 5 minutes. I couldn't, because I had a hard-drive, and the MC3 and hard-drive didn't quite get along (not unlike NoiseTracker II really)... MED MODULE: A MED module is just a MED song, collected together with the instruments required to play the song, in an uncompressed form. Therefore, these modules can generally crunched to save disk-space. MED SONG: CFX now knows all version of MED songs, even the new OctaMED 4 and 8 voice songs. MED songs may contain it's instruments internally, but then again, it might not. MED SYNTHESISED-INSTRUMENTS: MED is also able to synthesise its instruments for use in its songs. For more information on synthesised instruments, see SONIC ARRANGER SYNTHESISED-INSTRUMENT. MEGACRUNCHER/SUPPLEX ADDRESS: At first glance, this cruncher appears to be just another yuck-o address-cruncher. But NO! This cruncher is just another file/address-cruncher! It claims to be an extension of the MC1, but apart from them both being crunchers, there is little to compare. This cruncher doesn't do a great deal of *AMAZING* crunching, so I would leave it alone. A new version of this cruncher (just hacked and wanked) is called the SUPPLEX cruncher. This new version does nothing extra, apart from minimally changing one of Megacruncher's output filetypes. See also SUPPLEX OBJECT. MEGACRUNCHER OBJECT FILE: This is the filetype output by the Megacruncher program. This is supposedly an "object" file cruncher, in other words, it should crunch pre-linked object files. I would find this extremely difficult to believe, and as my test copy wouldn't run properly, I wouldn't really know anything much about this file except that it could be dodgey. I don't even know if you can DECRUNCH these files... MOST DATA: The data type as supplied on (amongst other things) the MEGADISC (disk on a magazine). I refer to this data type as "MOST DATA" because I don't know the exact name of the cruncher used to compress the data. The file "MOST" that VIEWS the files has therefore lent its name to this data type. It is an adequate data cruncher, and is usually used on text files, and some picture files so that the MEGADISC crew can pack a bit more data on their release disks (usually with filenames like this: "___T_H_E__P_I_C_T_U_R_E__F_I_L_E__I_S__H_E_R_E___._._.doc_". Its author is Richard Wynn and he doesn't supply the names for the MEGADISC files... MUTANT IMPLODER: For some reason, all of the loonies are crunching their wares! And to make things even more annoying for us, they are mutating most of these crunched files. This means that none of the file-examiners know the filetype of these files, and nothing can uncrunch them. Now CFX PRO 5 knows hundreds of combinations of these mutations, so finding a lot of them won't be so hard. CFX doesn't uncrunch them all (yet!?) Of course, once the wankers check out CFX, they will produce mutations that CFX can't pick, but that's just too bad. If you find unknown (but obviously crunched) filetypes, then get them to us, or else we can't update CFX. Simple. MUTANT POWERPACKER: See above. MUTANT POWERPACKER 3: See above above. MUTANT POWERPACKER 4: See above above. MUTANT TITANCRUNCH: See above above above. NOISETRACKER MODULE: This filetype is a complete "song" package, including the musical score, and instruments. You need a good module player or a good #?Tracker program to play it on, but it's worth it. Even that other platform (the MS-??? one) is using #?Tracker modules now. NOISETRACKER SONG: Again just the same format as the Soundtracker song format. The song data is crunched for efficient storage. This filetype is of identical format to the Master Cruncher 3 DATA output. I wonder where they got the routines from??... NOVIRUS PROTECTION FILE: This file has been manufactured by Nic Wilson (Hi Nic! SysInfo keeps telling me to "Phone You!" but I lost your number *;-) Anyhow, if you find this file in your DEVS: directory or something, leave it there, as it's designed to fool those doofus viruses out there. OBJECT MASTER: Another mostly useless cruncher which has found its way to the bottom of the heap. Again, I know very little about this filetype except that it is possibly an attempt at a file cruncher, and that you probably want to throw it away, don't you?... OKTALYSER SONG: The song output from this very obscure little music making program (have you ever heard 8 simultaneous voices on the Amiga?) This filetype is a format unto its own... OUTLINE FONT BITMAP: Well, as the name implies, this filetype is the bitmap definition for a particular outline font. OUTLINE FONT FUNCTION: AKA "Outline Tag", or "OTAG" file. Contains pointers to the "bullet" filetypes for use with this outline font. OUTLINE FONT TYPE/POOL: The specific names of these outline font filetypes elude me. If you know of a better, more technical term to give these things, then please email me with your ideas. I should run a contest. Naah. Anyhow, this filetype is of the *.type type. AKA "Bullet" data. P-COMPRESS LH DATA: P-Compress, from Chas A. Wyndham's P-Suite of programs, is a multi-purpose compression tool which allows lots of variations on data compression. Apparently the P-Suite uses Barthel and Krekel's "lh.library" to obtain a fairly adequate compression ratio/speed. P-Compress LH data is a file/files that has been compressed by P-Compress. P-COMPRESS PACK DATA: P-Compress also allows the saving of mulitple data "chunks" or parts into a single conglomerate, much like the way other archivers do, like LhA, for instance. This archive "pack" can be compressed or not. P-READER DATA: P-Compress allows the saving of data in a special way which will allow the P-Reader program to automatically know which form of display to use. P-Reader can apparently show P-Compressed text and pictures, and P-Reader can read a special number from the compressed data which informs it whether or not the display mode for this data is PAL or NTSC. CFX knows both PAL and NTSC compressed modes. PACKIT: A fairly good attempt at producing a "professional style" cruncher for the Amiga. This cruncher outputs a fairly bizarre address-crunched header and data. PACKIT has two crunch modes: RELOCATOR and DATA. RELOCATOR is a bizarre but standard address-cruncher. The DATA mode is very much akin to ByteKiller's data compression abilities. There is nothing amazing about this cruncher except for its slowness, which is phenomenal. Thankyou to Andy Garth for showing me this one... PAGEFLIPPER-PLUS ANIMATION: The output filetype of the PAGEFLIPPER animator package, which I must admit, I have never felt inclined to use, or even acquire. Probably incompatible with ALL other anim filetypes... PAGESTREAM DOCUMENT: For you PAGESTREAM freaks out there, I thought that I'd include these in case you got your directories mixed up. I don't know anything about these PAGESTREAM filetypes except that PAGESTREAM uses them. Besides, if you use Pagestream, you'll know what these are... PAGESTREAM EXPORT DRIVER: See PAGESTREAM DOCUMENT... PAGESTREAM FONT DATA FILE: See PAGESTREAM DOCUMENT... PAGESTREAM FONT MAP FILE: See PAGESTREAM DOCUMENT... PAGESTREAM IMPORT DRIVER: See PAGESTREAM DOCUMENT... PAGESTREAM PRINTER DRIVER: See PAGESTREAM DOCUMENT... PAK ARCHIVE: This is a self-unpacking archive filetype. This is from the "PAK" program (by Mark Riley??) and doesn't offer very much in the archiving line... PC EXECUTABLE FILE: Yuck! At least we can find these, I suppose. This is, as you guessed, an I*M PC executable (*.exe) file. There doesn't seem to be a regular pattern of bytes in the PC's *.com files, so I don't find those. PC PAK ARCHIVE: A new, and fairly cunning archiver on the PC, which I haven't as yet seen on the Amiga. This sports fairly comprehensive compression, and good uncrunch speeds. Don't get too excited, however. PCX IMAGE: Yes, another alien graphics format! This is one of the innumerable PC graphics formats, that we all love to try and convert to HAM. PHOENIX DISCRUNCHER: A weird little disk-tracker utility that took approximately 40 minutes to crunch a blank disk on my 1 meg Amiga 500. I won't say anything more about this filetype except: ooooh. PIXEL 3D IMPORT SETTINGS: This filetype is generated by the object manipulator, PIXEL 3D, when you decide to save your IMPORT settings. PKAMIGAZIP ARCHIVE: An Intuition ZIP archiver filetype. I haven't personally used ZIP (except on the AT) so I don't really know how much better than LHARC it is, if at all!? Of course this is a decrunchable filetype... PKAMIGAZIP PREFERENCES: As above. This filetype is the direct consequence of saving your default preferences from within PKAMIGAZIP. PMBC IMAGE: PMBC is an acronym for Black Belt's new bitplane-wise compression technique, called "Plane Minimising Bitmap Compression". Wow. Didn't A. J. Brouwer have a bitplane-wise cruncher in '87? Where's Apple's "look-and-feel" litigators when you need them? POSTSCRIPT OUTPUT: This is an output type of AdPro on the Amiga, but I'm not too sure if this is a standard Adobe Postscript file. It most probably is, I think. Therefore, just think of this as a standard Postscript filetype. POWER WINDOWS DATA: One of the more useful programs to be written in the past decade, this output data type is from the POWER WINDOWS, the programmer's Intuition tool... POWERPACKER COMMAND <3: The second best file cruncher around (at the moment!) that I've personally seen. Various "Turbo" versions have sprung up from various (dodgey) sources of late. They all work the same, and present the same output, which this is a part of. The "<3" part of my description is to inform you that CFX will find PP filetypes BEFORE version 3 of PP. Nico Francois has written PP3, which looks like it should give IMPLODER a run for the top cruncher spot. This filetype (again!) is GENERALLY decrunchable, unless, of course, you run into the dreadful MASTER crunch. MASTER crunch is a standard crunch mode with (what appears to be) two or three different machine-words of information in the decrunch-header. This allows MASTER crunched files to run perfectly well, but you can't uncrunch them with PowerPacker (any versions) in normal mode. When you enter MASTER mode in PP, it says: "Welcome to MASTER MODE, MASTER CRUNCH activated!" Only then can you uncrunch MASTER crunched files. I now know how to get into MASTER mode in PP, because Michael Chamberlain told me! All of the PowerPacker filetypes have a MASTER equivalent, except the data modes, and (I think) PowerPacker 4 stuff. CFX PRO 5 (we hope) knows them all. POWERPACKER 3 COMMAND: Still the second best file-cruncher around. This release of PowerPacker, version 3, appears to have more features than previous versions, but the crunching power of the 3 ISN'T greatly improved. This filetype can only be decrunched with version 3 of Power Packer. The crunching method used is similar to before, but the decrunch header has been totally rewritten. There aren't many more changes apparent, except for the built-in TURBO crunch. Turbo Imploder wins again. POWERPACKER 3 ENCRYPTED COMMAND: Appears to be standard PP command- cruncher filetype except that to decrunch this file with PP again, you will need the password, as in PP DATA-ENCRYPTION. This file performs as desired under execution. It's just that you can't decrunch it easily unless you have the password. The passwording technique used by the author is fairly intricate, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone writes a decoder for the thing... POWERPACKER 3 OVERLAYED COMMAND: Not to be out-done by the Imploders, PP 3 can now crunch overlayed files. This type of file (overlayed) is displayed by CFX by having an "O" as the second flag in its listing. Like Imploder, PP 3 only loads the initial Reloc_32/16 hunks into memory, and then crunches that data. It then appends the "overlayed" hunk sections to the bottom of this crunched data, and finally prepends its own decrunching header to the file and saves it out for you. Standard application of the Imploder idea. I don't know who thought of it first, but it's not a bad idea, but not too effective really (as far as crunching overhead goes!) This filetype cannot be ENCRYPTED by PP 3 as yet, but don't worry, the author will probably figure it out shortly... POWERPACKER 4 COMMAND: A very much improved version of PowerPacker is version 4. AmigaDOS 2.0 look and feel. No Enforcer hits. Slick, fast, reliable. Buy it! You need it! Its options are innumerable. This is the standard PP4 filetype which is output by PP4. This filetype is NOT decrunchable by lower versions of PP. POWERPACKER 4 ENCRYPTED COMMAND: As above but the program is also encrypted, using a bastard of a cypher. Fairly much secure. You have to enter the password in a tiny string requester before this program will run. If you don't know the password, then keep trying. There can only be a couple of zillion combinations to go... POWERPACKER 4 LIBRARY: Check out the POWERPACKER 4 COMMAND entry, and combine it with the IMPLODER LIBRARY entry, and then think hard. This is very similar to the IMPLODER library crunched file except that the library is different! Again only decrunchable by PP4+. POWERPACKER 4 ENCRYPTED LIBRARY: Check out the POWERPACKER 4 ENCRYPTED COMMAND entry, and the POWERPACKER 4 LIBRARY entry. They tell all! POWERPACKER 4 LIBRARY OVERLAY: As with the above, except that the file is overlayed. POWERPACKER 4 LOADSEG: Hmm, to be honest, I haven't really looked at this, so I might just have a guess. The file isn't executable. I would then guess that you would need to have a LoadSeg() patch active so that when the LoadSeg() function is hit by a file with "PPLS" as the first longword, it could jump/re-route to a decrunch routine which would then launch the decrunched data as a standard AmigaDOS file? Jees, I hope this is right... POWERPACKER 4 LOADSEG OVERLAY: Please see above and add the word overlay generously. POWERPACKER 4 OVERLAY: As with the POWERPACKER 4 COMMAND entry, except that this file is also overlayed. Check the CFX documentation on "OVERLAYS". POWERPACKER DATA: This is the PP data crunch filetype, which is again identical to previous versions of the PowerPacker data cruncher. Data is interchangeable between versions of this type. This is filetype is generally decrunchable... POWERPACKER DATA-ENCRYPTION: The same as above, except that you will need a password to decrunch the data. If you don't know the password I can suggest a fix: delete the thing... POWERPACKER PREFERENCES: This filetype is default preferences which are saved by POWERPACKER 3+ (?) so that you can have PowerPacker customised the next time you run it. (Oh lord, it is late!) POWERPLAYER MODULE CRUNCHER: This fletype is output by the PMC utility, which is designed to crunch music modules like SoundTracker and NoiseTracker modules. PMC uses the "lh.library" to crunch the modules. Not terribly impressive. POWERVISOR STRUCTURE DEFINITION: PowerVisor, the debugger to end all debuggers. Apparently a program in the PV distribution called "MSTRUCT" will build a "PVSD" file for you. This is practically (I think!?) a data type used by PV for looking up certain structure types within a given situation/library-base. PowerVisor is a hard-core program. PRE-LINK OBJECT MODULE: This filetype is brought about by compilers and assemblers before it is LINKED to form an executable file. It is also sometimes used to make reference libraries for programmers... QOWERQACKER DATA: Yes, you read it right. As featured in PowerVisor, the debugger. Why? Because he was bored maybe? Who knows why. This file is nothing but a PowerPacker data file, with the first two bytes of it's header changed from "PP" to "QQ". Quite novel, really. QUARTERBACK BACKUP FILE: This is the file that can be output by QuarterBack 5.00+ (?) when you specify that the backup is to be sent to a file instead of a device. This file may be encrypted and/or compressed. RED SECTOR DEMOMAKER DEMO: This is a funny little filetype which should prove which coders are really coding their demos. The RS Demomaker allows the user to make a demo and then save it out, as such. This filetype is the direct result of this output. RELOKIT: A truly wonderful piece of crap this program. Use PowerPacker to decrunch and rebuild this poor file. Relokit fools with the original file and outputs this garbage, which is neither crunched properly, or changed significantly for the better... RESOURCE .RS MODULE: The best Australian program ever written: RESOURCE by Glen McDiarmid, from Ipswich, QLD. He has worked his butt off to make this the best disassembler/debugger on the market. It's workings are almost unfathomable, as it is *SO* intelligent. No, I'm not being sarcastic, this is the real thing. This filetype is from this sublime program, and can only be used with paid-registered original copies of RESOURCE... RESOURCE MACRO DATA: ReSource allows you to save your internal macro definitions, so that you can load them again tomorrow, instead of having to re-define them again! [footnote 5] RESOURCE *.RCL FILE: This filetype is now supplied with ReSource version 5 and allows you disassemble files very easily. This filetype is a pre-defined set of disassembly rules that can be applied to a file to be disassembled. The RCL file then checks things out and does its work, automagically. Some files are almost fully disasembled after running one of these babies over them. SAS/C TRACEBACK DUMP: See IFF-PGTB. SCENERY ANIMATOR DATA: I don't know much about this one, so I won't say much. If you have paid for the SCENERY-ANIMATOR program, then you will know what this filetype is when told "SCENERY ANIMATOR FILETYPE"... SIMCITY SCENARIO: One of the coolest games ever! This is a city scenario datafile for this top game. This datafile is interchangeable with other platform's versions of SimCity. SOFTWOOD FILER II PROJECT: The very best small-end database for the Amiga. This is the output from the SOFTWOOD FILER II database... SONIC ARRANGER SAMPLED-INSTRUMENT: I had a look at SOAR from a Fish disk. Looks incredibly good, I must say. If I had a shred of musical talent, and some patience, I would probably register a copy of it. Anyhow, this filetype is of course a sampled instrument which is for use with this software. SONIC ARRANGER SONG: As above. This filetype is song data to be used for SOAR. SONIC ARRANGER SYNTHESISED-INSTRUMENT: As above, except that this filetype is a "manufactured" instrument. Instead of having a huge sample (digital recording) of a snare-drum, you can actually fiddle with SOAR's synthesiser, and "make" really cool sounding instruments, which when saved out, are heaps smaller than samples, and can sound even better than samples. The old Aegis product "Sonix" had a cool synthesiser, but not as cool as this baby... SOUNDBLASTER VOC SAMPLE: Talking about sounds, I've just plugged in to Jarre's Equinox. Lovely. Anyhow, this filetype is from the MS-DOS side of town. The SoundBlaster is a "peripheral" [footnote 6] which allows an MS-DOS PC to beep in 12 stereo voices, instead of one mono voice. The VOC sound filetype is best played on a SoundBlaster, as it sounds like shit on the Amiga's "built-in" [footnote 7] sound hardware. There are increasing numbers of software projects that will convert all of these weirdo sound types to Amiga IFF-8SVX or whatever. SOUNDTRACKER MODULE: See NOISETRACKER MODULE... SOUNDTRACKER SONG: See NOISETRACKER SONG... STANDARD-FILESYSTEM BOOTBLOCK: Just a normal "GRABBED" AmigaDOS bootblock, generally of 1024 bytes length, but it can be more, depending on the program that it was grabbed with... STARTREKKER MODULE (4 & 8): Yet another module/music maker. This one allows 4 and 8 voice music to be composed. The data can be saved out as 4 or 8 voice modules. CFX knows both. STARTREKKER MODULE INFO: I cannot remember what this one was. See above. STONECRACKER: STONECRUNCHER: These appear to be different versions of the same thing. A standard-ish address-cruncher. Both by "Mr. Spiv of Cave", I think. I don't know why I remembered that information, but it stuck in my head for some reason. I don't think these two are decrunchable. STUFFIT ARCHIVES: CFX now knows two A??le platform StuffIt archive types. I don't know of any Amiga version of StuffIt, either cruncher or decruncher, so you'll need a friend with a Mac to decrunch it for you. [footnote 9] SUN MICROSYSTEMS AUDIO SAMPLE: Yet yet yet another sound sample filetype from an alien platform, although if anyone want's to give me a SUN workstation, I'll have it. Again, this filetype is convertible to something Amiga-ish, so if you really want this sample, get it converted. SUPER-CRUNCHER: Yet another address cruncher. This one isn't really so super. It's just the same as the other twenty-gonzillion address crunchers. SUPPLEX OBJECT: This is the filetype output by the SUPPLEX cruncher. This is supposedly an "object" file cruncher, in other words, it should crunch pre-linked object files, much like the MegaCruncher (which this is a hack-up version of.) The outputs from this cruncher (like MegaCruncher) are so ineffectual, and so lame that I cannot see why you'd use this cruncher. I don't even know if you can DECRUNCH these files... SYNCROPACKER ADDRESS: Practically just another address-cruncher, with nothing special to contribute to the world of Amiga owners. Has the usual address-cruncher problems, and doesn't appear to be decrunchable... SYNCROPACKER RAW: The Syncropacker data filetype is like its crunched file brother in that it is next to useless, and not decrunchable... TEMP GIF FILE (M. PODLIPEC): This is the output of Mark Podlipec's GIF to HAM program (or is it HAM to GIF?) I can't remember... TETRAGON 'TETRAPACK': Probably the best loved (and hated) of the address- crunchers. This is the cornerstone of address crunchers, as it is very good for what it does. It allows chunks of executable code to be crunched and fixed to a certain address, and then decrunched to the same address. It is especially found in demos, and cracked games, as it rarely crashes if it is the only thing running. Tetrapack also has the capability of using the mega/pro decrunch mode, which allows it to start up games right at any moment inside the game's code, sort of like a software version of FreezeMachine. Love it or hate it, it's going to be around for some time yet. CFX PRO 5 knows a few different versions of this cruncher. Generally not decrunchable... TIMECRUNCHER: Another address-cruncher that does nothing but steamroll certain memory areas. Not decrunchable, however, so it's annoying. TITANCRUNCH 'OVERLAYED': This is a new concept in crunching. The title may suggest that this cruncher is FOR overlayed files. Quite the opposite is true. This cruncher takes NORMAL non-overlayed programs, and crunches them, then writes out this output filetype which IS overlayed. Because overlayed programs are hard to get at (ie. prying fingers) this offers some form of primitive protection. It also allows machines low on memory to load in a part of the program, decrunch it to memory, and then continue on loading small parts of the program and decrunching, thus eliminating the need for HUGE memory areas for decrunching. The decrunching process appears to takes significantly longer than other crunchers however. To decrunch this one, you will need the new PowerPacker, version 3... TNM'S MASTER CRUNCHER 1: Probably as close to the first file-cruncher that we will get. The New Masters they were called. This cruncher uses classical crunching techniques, along with adequate crunching rate and byte kill factor. The decrunching speed of this filetype is quite inoffensive. Easily decrunched by itself (MC1) or just about any PowerPacker. This probably leads to memory fragmentation, although I haven't witnessed it first hand. Probably the overall most-oft-used file cruncher in the world... TRISTAR DOUBLE ACTION: The Double Action cruncher claims to be about the best cruncher around. I found otherwise. It constantly crashed on my 2000. I didn't even get to benchmark it alongside IMPLODER and PP. This output type is of the address-cruncher type, in other words, it decrunches its program straight to memory. Probably not decrunchable. It probably has many different crunching modes, but as none of them would work, I was hard-pushed to get a header file from any of them, but I did (just)... TRYIT CRUNCHER: This jewel is by "Bernd!" I just *love* this program. I would give up a dirty weekend in Niagara with Kelly Bundy to meet with Bernd! and talk address crunchers [footnote 10]. The description of this cruncher I gave to my beta-testers was "...another sluggish address cruncher..." and this filetype is the fruit of Bernd!'s sweaty loins. TSK (?): This little beauty just kept on avoiding and avoiding. I couldn't get a header file or anything from it. Crash, crash, crash etc etc. Appears to be another address-cruncher, probably written to celebrate that Lars had cracked his first copy-protected disk. Good on you Lars... TUC (THE ULTIMATE CRUNCHER): This filetype comes from a cruncher which probably contained the world's first encrypted command crunching. This program was hard to fathom since it's titles/instructions were written in something akin to German, or was it French, or Ethiopian? Yet again, another address cruncher. TUFF ADDRESS: A nicely cleaned up version of Bytekiller, sporting a speed increase of around 30%. This speed increase is because of a shutdown of just about all DMA stuff, except the crunching routine. Slightly better crunching too, I must add. How do I know this? Because I wrote the thing. It is essentially another address-cruncher, with the same problems as before, but it is quicker. Generally not decrunchable, but with some trickery can be decrunched... TURBO SILVER OBJECT: An output of this type is from Impulse's Turbo Silver raytracing program. This is a specific object ONLY, and not a scene file. TURBOSQUEEZER: From the French: TURBINE, generally accepted larrikinism for "SPEED"; also SQUEEZER, meaning to make smaller, to crunch. How wrong they could be. This cruncher is neither TURBO (ie. fast) nor is it a squeezer, as it often makes your files BIGGER. This is a hybrid cruncher that defies explanation. Generally not decrunchable, but you can try if your brain can take it... VIDEOSCAPE 3D CAMERA FILE: Videoscape 3D output file for camera positioning inside of animation "scenes"... VIDEOSCAPE 3D MODEL FILE: Output file describing various parts of a centralised "OBJECT" or "MODEL" to be placed inside of a scene, so that Videoscape 3D can render the scene, complete with the model. The model can be designed with various "modeling" software (ie. Aegis Modeler)... VIDEOSCAPE 3D MOTION FILE: Videoscape output file describing the movements of essential parts of a "scene" within a Videoscape 3D animation... VIDEOSCAPE 3D SETTING FILE: Output file from Videoscape 3D describing the aesthetic parts of a Vscape animation scene... VIRUS CHECKER PREFERENCES: VirusChecker by John Veldthuis will alow you to save your defined preferences to your SYS: disk so that next time you run Virus Checker, you won't have to re-define your setup. This filetype is that preference file. VIRUSZ PREFERENCES: VirusZ will save this default configuration file when you tell it to. This file holds information about the setup of VirusZ so that the next time you run VirusZ, it will remember how to set up your default environment, and keep you happy. VISTA DEM DATA: Vista is one of these new graphics programs that make pretty, very realistic pictures of real or imagines places from sets of numbers. Vista generates landscapes and pseudo-landscapes which look quite cute. Additional to your selected numbers, Vista will act upon other "base" data, which is release by the Meteorological Dept. every so often. This data is known as DEM data (I cannot remember what DEM stands for at the moment!) The DEM data is collected via satellite. This data is apparently in some generic form that these programs can read, and can generate cute pictures from. This filetype is of that datatype. WARP (DISK-TRACKER): One of the first disk-trackers to be presented to the Amiga. It is the predecessor to DiskMaSher, and from the same company. Of course, DiskMaSher has now made WARP redundant. Used to archive certain (or all) tracks from a disk, crunch them, ready to send via modem, or to store for archival purposes. Of course this one is decrunchable... WORKBENCH .info FILE: Just the usual icon files, really. ZAP DISK ARCHIVE: Apparently a "better disk-tracker/archiver than LHWARP" but I wouldn't bet on it. The old Zap tracker generates these filetypes after crunching a disk for you. Probably best avoided since it's not really a well-known archiver. ZOO: Another interesting Amiga file archiver, which was one of the best until the spate of Lempel-Zev/Huffman encoding algorithms ended its reign of superior archiver. Now LHARC and PKAZIP have taken over from this one, but you will probably see this filetype around occasionally. decrunchable... ZOOM (DISK) ARCHIVE: A new disk-tracker from Olaf Barthel, I think. (Correct me if I'm wrong!) I haven't really used it much, so I only know that it crunches a disk, track by track. That's it really, other than it's generally decrunchable. CFX knows several different versions of ZOOM, since there has been a few updates since ZOOM's filetypes were originally added to CFX. CFX knows: -v5.0; v5.0+ v5.0+ encrypted. The encrypted filetype is a new type with version 5.0+ of ZOOM. This filetype is decrunchable, and appears to be quite usable. From my tests, however, DMS 1.11 runs slightly better than ZOOM, although I haven't performed tests lately. ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ [1] Red and white chequered floor with shiny mirrored balls. [2] Conditions apply. [3] Lovely plumage the Norwegian Blue! [4] LHA kicks ass. Oh, that reminds me. What I want for Xmas, part 1: Kelly Bundy. A version of Shrink that runs as fast as LHA 1.32. Thanks... [5] It's 05:00am, and not even G'n'R UYI 1 can save me now. [6] "Peripheral" from the MS-DOS dialect meaning "..to add something as a complete afterthought, generally costing the fool buying it a fortune.." [7] "built-in" from the Los Gatos dialect meaning "..to have an inkling about hardware design.." [footnote 8] [8] Not to be confused with C= strategies or C= employees. [9] First check with A??le and ensure you don't owe them a squillion in back-payments for defaulted licencing infringements. [10] Well, I'm lying. So sue me. ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ CFX © 1988+ Bob Rye Outline fonts © 1990+ Agfa Corporation