[comp.sys.amiga.misc] .ZOM archives -- DONT USE IT!!!

colas@lemur.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) (04/23/91)

In article <29668@rouge.usl.edu>, cac5961@rouge.usl.edu (Castor Christian A)
writes:
>     I have a question, though.  When I finished compressing the Walker_I
> demo, the zoom program GURU'ed my amiga (at the moment I tried to
> quit it).   Anyone has experienced this problem?

The zoom program is extremely unreliable, please don't use it!
I got gurus with on a lot of occasions, crunching or decrunching.
Worst case yet, on some occasions it crunches fines, then guru when
decrunching!
It is a pity since Zoom is faster than DMS at low compression, and at the same
more efficient than the highest compresion mode of DMS. But for now DMS is still
the only valid choice for disk archiving... Nobody seemed to have any problem
with dms. If zoom comes out with a bug-free version, I will register it,
otherwise I will have to register for dms.

Apparently, zoom GURUs on disks containing already compressed files, such as
demo or games. Apparently the Zoom programmer wasn't aware that compressing
compressed data makes it expand, and may be overflowing some buffers...

So:

DO NOT USE ZOOM v4.1!!!

PS: do you know if the zoom author is on the net?

-- 
Colas Nahaboo, colas@sa.inria.fr, Bull Research, Koala Project, GWM X11 WM
Phone:(33) 93.65.77.70(.66 Fax), INRIA, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE.

cdibenedetto@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu (04/24/91)

In article <11030@mirsa.inria.fr>, colas@lemur.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:
> In article <29668@rouge.usl.edu>, cac5961@rouge.usl.edu (Castor Christian A)
> writes:
>>     I have a question, though.  When I finished compressing the Walker_I
>> demo, the zoom program GURU'ed my amiga (at the moment I tried to
>> quit it).   Anyone has experienced this problem?
> 
> The zoom program is extremely unreliable, please don't use it!
> I got gurus with on a lot of occasions, crunching or decrunching.

	I haven't had a problem with Zoom yet.  I've decrunched many files
(haven't had a need to crunch, so I cant' speak on that yet) and have had no
problem whatsoever.  I liked it because it was not only faster, but I didn't
need to wipe the disk it was decrunching to.  It wiped it for me.  I'll give it
a shot crunching some disks and see if that GURU's it or not.

----
Cesi

colas@lemur.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) (04/25/91)

In article <4975.28154bfb@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> you write:
>	I haven't had a problem with Zoom yet.  I've decrunched many files
>(haven't had a need to crunch, so I cant' speak on that yet)

yes, problem are much more on the compressing side, which explains why you didnt
see them: bad .zom archives couldn't be uploaded, since zoom gurued the
machine... You only get to see the good ones. I have got some cases where it
compressed Ok, and decrunched a non-working disk. Granted, dms is slower, but
better safe than soirry. Besides, I use low compression (cmode 1 or 2) which is
super-fast, although not efficient, but Ftp transfers are fast, so there is no
need to super-compress files generally. And uploading a bad .zom file is so
annoying, you don't do it twice! Fool me once, shame on zoom, fool me twice,
shame on me!

> problem whatsoever.  I liked it because it was not only faster, but I didn't
> need to wipe the disk it was decrunching to.  It wiped it for me.  

DMS does it too, only slower. It would be a NICE addition to dms to use the
lhlib (fish disk 436) to provide a lz-mode compression at near no programming
costs for the DMS authors... Do SDS people have net access?

> I'll give it
> a shot crunching some disks and see if that GURU's it or not.

Try on non-amigados format (games), or disks containing already compressed data
(.lzh), that's the most probable way of calling Mr meditation...

-- 
Colas Nahaboo, colas@sa.inria.fr, Bull Research, Koala Project, GWM X11 WM
Phone:(33) 93.65.77.70(.66 Fax), INRIA, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE.

s902113@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Luke Mewburn) (04/26/91)

colas@lemur.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:

>In article <29668@rouge.usl.edu>, cac5961@rouge.usl.edu (Castor Christian A)
>writes:
>>     I have a question, though.  When I finished compressing the Walker_I
>> demo, the zoom program GURU'ed my amiga (at the moment I tried to
>> quit it).   Anyone has experienced this problem?

>The zoom program is extremely unreliable, please don't use it!
>I got gurus with on a lot of occasions, crunching or decrunching.
>Worst case yet, on some occasions it crunches fines, then guru when
>decrunching!
>It is a pity since Zoom is faster than DMS at low compression, and at the same
>more efficient than the highest compresion mode of DMS. But for now DMS is still
>the only valid choice for disk archiving... Nobody seemed to have any problem
>with dms. If zoom comes out with a bug-free version, I will register it,
>otherwise I will have to register for dms.

>Apparently, zoom GURUs on disks containing already compressed files, such as
>demo or games. Apparently the Zoom programmer wasn't aware that compressing
>compressed data makes it expand, and may be overflowing some buffers...

>So:

>DO NOT USE ZOOM v4.1!!!

>PS: do you know if the zoom author is on the net?

Well, try this: DON'T USE ZOOM FROM WORKBENCH
It works pretty well from CLI, but it crashes alot from WB

>-- 
>Colas Nahaboo, colas@sa.inria.fr, Bull Research, Koala Project, GWM X11 WM
>Phone:(33) 93.65.77.70(.66 Fax), INRIA, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE.


-- 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Luke Mewburn   (Zak)                |     This side for rent...      |
| s902113@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au        |                                |

colas@lemur.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) (04/30/91)

In article <1991Apr26.014734.5816@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au>,
s902113@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Luke Mewburn) writes:
> Well, try this: DON'T USE ZOOM FROM WORKBENCH
> It works pretty well from CLI, but it crashes alot from WB

Following your advice, I just tried it on the disks I remember were crashing
zoom from WB. They all crashed zoom from cli too!

-- 
Colas Nahaboo, colas@sa.inria.fr, Bull Research, Koala Project, GWM X11 WM
Phone:(33) 93.65.77.70(.66 Fax), INRIA, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE.

holgerl@amiux.agsc.sub.org (Holger Lubitz) (05/05/91)

In article <11030@mirsa.inria.fr> colas@lemur.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) writes:

>PS: do you know if the zoom author is on the net?

He hasn't access to News at the moment, but the following mail adress
should work:

o.barthel@a-link-h.zer.sub.org

I am currently forwarding any bug reports posted here to him, but they are
generally too unspecific to do something about them. However, he suggested
increasing the stack size to fix the "Zoom crashes on Exit" bug.

I am also willing to forward any mail to him if the above adress shouldn't
work. You can reach me as

holgerl@amiux.agsc.sub.org

or

cbmehq!cbmger!amiux!holgerl@cbmvax.commodore.com

Reactions to incoming bug reports will probably appear as a public summary,
since private international email is quite expensive in Germany.

Best regards,
Holger

--
Holger Lubitz, Kl. Drakenburger Str. 24, D-W-3070 Nienburg/Weser