The Guide - Le Crunch 19/07/97

In our never-ending quest to make you privvy to important information which would, otherwise, fall by the vast digital wayside and so remain lost forever in a void of infinite neverendingness, we present our definitive guide to old Amiga crunchers, so the next time your Amiga`s (or UAE`s, of course) display becomes awash with garish colours, you can confidently speak with an air of elitist authority. Or something.

THE TETRAGON CRUNCHER Original Author: Anti Action

Back in the days when system-friendly C-coding was the stuff of a crazed (and probably bespectacled) nerd`s dreams, existed the most offensive of the `bastard packers`. The next time you download a 900k ADF only to find that it doesn`t work on UAE, curse aloud the following exclamation; "Damn That Tetrapack to Sweden".

Observe the distinctive flashes of lime green and navy blue as they tear apart the very fibres of your Amiga`s operating system. All in the name of loading a copy of Fire Blaster, but in one-part.

However, it is in `Mega Crunch` mode that Tetrapack really comes into it`s own. It`s still hard to see why you would need to pack your latest mind-blowing demo as low as $2c in memory, but lots of you did. You scamps.

BYTEKILLER Original Author: Lord Blitter

Lord Blitter was the first gentleman of the Amiga. He stopped his activities long before I even got my hands on my first Amiga - but his memory lived on in the form of Bytekiller. It was Blitter who originally devised the concept of completely trashing your system to peices via the process of loading a program hurriedly packed on his cruncher (well, on the Amiga at least).

The unpacking of a Bytekilled file comprises three stages. If your CLI or Workbench suddendly flashes a cobalt hue (or striking jade, should you have more than 512k) - be suspicious. If shortly after a darker blue is evident, you could confidently bet vast amounts of money. However, confirmation normally comes in the shape of a jet black screen - imminently followed by a red flashing box in most cases.

POWERPACKER Original Author: Nico Francois

Ironically, Power Packer was always looked upon as being something of a cop-out in the good old days. If your latest high-budget production was provided as a ready-to-run Powerpacker executable, gales of mocking laughter were guaranteed to ensue. Which is strange really as Power Packer was the most system friendly of all the packers, preventing you from `accidentally` packing your absolute SEKA object files at $7A.

Power Packer does it`s stuff in a variety of easilly recognisable ways. The most common being a burst of rainbow colours pumped through $DFF180 (Color Register 0, Fact Fans). Instead, the very same stream might tickle your mouse pointer, the CLI text - or even the cursor.. No! But yes.

Although Power Packer has long since been eclipsed by the likes of Stone Cruncher and the XPK Suite (indeed, Power Packer hasn`t been updated in more than three years), We feel that the continual derision it recieved was most unfair and would like to reset the balance by stating that Power Packer was `quite alright`.

TITANICS CRUNCHER Original Author: Titanics

Famous for a particularly dusty music disk in 1989, the Titanics were also reknown for their rather unusual cruncher.

Instead of working in the same way as the other crunchers (ie: loading a file into any spare memory available and then unpacking the file over itself with a small offset), the Titanics cruncher unpacked in small segments into available memory. Ingenious, and it worked most of the time too.

Thoughtfully, the Titanics Cruncher helpfully aids the detection process by proclaiming "TITANICS-Cruncher decrunches while loading" in the nearest available CON: But - oh no! - it was possible to change this line to just about anything that would fit. Although, it`s worth mentioning that the kind of production that featured an alternative message is unlikely to be worth viewing.

And there were others too..

Oh yes. But they were largely in the minority and served only very obscure purposes. Take for instance, the TNM cruncher (by The New Masters) which was the first of the relocatable packers, almost redundant in an age when almost no-one wrote relocatable code. Still, you could always console yourself by staring in awe at the pretty moire pattern it drew whilst crunching was in progress.

If pretty patterns weren`t your thing, you could busy yourself with the medium-res scroller of the German Mega Cruncher (which featured the obligatory broken English instructions to use (sic)), or listen to the (actually very good) tune which accompanied your Imploder sessions (the most boring packer to watch unpack - it doesn`t do anything).

Double Action was a Tetrapack derivative from TRSI, Time Cruncher was another early cruncher - so early in fact I can`t remember who was resposible for that particular atrocity. And probably a few others too, but now at least you know what probably made your Amiga crash so horrendously the last time you tried loading Great Giana Sisters or other nefariously BBS-sourced programs. DeeJay99