ClassAction GFXCon | Archandler
Sorry for the badly scanned pages, but I really never
previously on scuzzblog: Amiga Disc Expander
Previously on scuzzblog: Power Computing - Floppy Expander.
Previously om scuzzblog: Amiga 1200 - Parnet.. again !!
Previously on scuzzblog: Cover Disk Frenzy - Useful Tools.
ScuzzBlog: Diaries October 2024
Entry 21st October 2024: Post 1: Amiga ARCHandler- disk and disc expanding.
Amiga ARCHandler- disk and disc expanding.
The fun and games I went through back in the day to squeeze out
any additional storage for data was quite painful. With disc space
on hard drives costing anything up to a quid a megabyte being most
efficient in the use of drive space was essential.
A number of products came on the market to both expand hard drive
capacities and also floppy expanders to increase storage space. All
tended to use some clever archiving mechanism to squish stuff up.
One bit of software that I experimented with was a thing called
ARCHandler that basically read any LHA file as though it was in
in a decompressed state. Thing was that that is exactly what was
going on and consequently it slowed all normal Workbench processes.
ARCHandler created a drawer on your Workbench that accessed the
same drawers as you normal WB but when it came to LHA files it
would display the actual contents as though it was decompressed.
This meant that you could LHA/Compress all your data files on
your hard drive saving oodles of space and then access them by
using the ARCHandler. The concept was brilliant. Sadly the
execution was very slow.
In the end I did a number things. First up I bought a Power XL
drive that let me read high density disks and use 1.4MB storage.
Second I purchased another A1200 and used its hard drive on a
Parnet system. I also dabbled in 3.5" drives inside the A1200.
Eventually I fitted a Squirrel and expanded via SCSI drives.
I also used an AmiPC hook up to connect to a Win95 machine.
In time I got over the problem but I have to say for a number of
years I was squeezing every last little kb out of my disks. It
was quite sad that I had to destroy a lot of stuff just to make
way for new data. That was the problem with animation and the
video capture, it was just so disc/disk space hungry.
Saying all that I am playing around with 250GB free data on this
2TB drive so some things don't change. Maybe I should live on a
cloud... seems to be the fashion. Or not, probably not.
Amiga ARCHandler- disk and disc expanding.
want to damage the spine on my magazine.
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Last updated 21st October 2024
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