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WINZIP not compatible w/ PKUNZIP?

S

Shadow Lord

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Hello All,

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue: I used winzip 15 to zip up MS Client and split it into 360KB disk size segments. winzip can unzip/test the file w/o issues. However, when I run pkunzip 2.04g on the zip file I get CRC errors galore. And before anyone asks: yes I was zipping the file in compatibility mode. I tried it w/ both nomral and no compression mode w/ the same results. Any ideas? Thanks.
 
You're looking at several years of distance between the two products. It doesn't surprise me that WinZIP isn't downward-compatible.

Why not use PKZIP?
 
The split deals with archive encryption, straight compression shouldn't be an issue. I've never run across these problems with PKUNZIP and Winzip created archives... or even zip files created with WinRAR. PKWare did release a DOS PKUNZIP 2.50 that might still work on a XT. Personally I stopped using Winzip after 8.x, really didn't see a need for any of the newer version's features and later switched to WinRAR when that archive format became more popular.
 
@Chuck(G): Because it was just much easier to do it with WinZip. At least in theory. With PKZIP there is no way to tell it, AFAIK, to split the archive into a certain size. You can have it span across floppies but that takes forever. Also, I only have a HD drive in that machine, so any DSDD disks PKZIP wrote to would not be readable in a LD drive. But I may just do that to get moving forward. I need to get MS Client on my older systems so I an get them on the LAN at which point things should go easy breezy... Yeah right.

@dorkbert: I think the rift was mostly over encryption not actual compression. I am not using any encryption so it should be okay...

@njroadfan: I am wondeirng if the latest WinZip is not as compatible. I am running WinZip 15 on my Win 7 x64 system. It just seems weird that it would not work. I may try WinRAR and see if it produces a better ZIP file.
 
I've generally found it easier to archive using whatever my choice is (usually lha) then split that separately if needed. Use SLICE.COM. It's 1904 bytes and is quick and easy. Synatx is "slice filename a:" and it automatically generates the mirror program, called SPLICE, on the first diskette.
 
Ole Juul said:
I've generally found it easier to archive using whatever my choice is (usually lha) then split that separately if needed. Use SLICE.COM. It's 1904 bytes and is quick and easy. Synatx is "slice filename a:" and it automatically generates the mirror program, called SPLICE, on the first diskette.
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Good suggestion. I'll have to keep it in mind for next time. Honestly, once I have a system w/ a DD drive connected to my LAN this won't be such a huge issue. Just got to get there.

BTW: WinRAR does not allow small ZIP files just RARs (i.e. only spans RAR not ZIP).
 
Okay I think I got it: Winzip does not do real spanning. Now, that I am playing with it old memories are being dredged up.

When you span w/ PKZIP 2.04g it puts the same file name on each disk. I.E. if you create an archive with the name test.zip PKZIP will create a test.zip file on each disk and fills the disk to capacity then moves on to the next disk. It relies on the volume labels of the disks to figure out which disk is first, second, etc. It also requires you to put in the last disk first, so it can read the file list which is stored at the end of a ZIP file, and then swap disks to the first disk to do the actual unzipping.

WinZip creates a ZIP file to the specified size and then creates Zxx files as needed. PKUNZIP has no idea that the rest of the ZIP file is in the Zxx files and hence the CRC errors.

Now only if I could figure out my floppy drive issues I'll be set ;)
 
Try Winrar, I've personally used the most recent version of WinRAR that does let you split archives between disks, and I can personally attest to a very old version of "rar" for dos I found on a BBS last month is able to not only extract from split archives created by winrar in ms-dos, but also spans multi-disk archives when placed in the same folder. This is what I did for getting windows 3.11 installer into my 486 when I didn't have any blank CD's. used Winrar and split it into 1.2mb peices, then slowly with 2 flopies going back and forth between machines, copied all 12 peices into the same folder in dos, then used ms-dos unrar, and it spit out all 1800 files or so and setup was up and running.
 
Yes WinRAR works fine with DOSRAR. I just ended up spanning on my 486 on blank DD and luckily my 5150 read the disks with no issues. I may go with WINRAR though as I still want a set of reliable DD.
 
twolazy said:
I've found 7zip works well with pkzip 2.x if using .zip files, not .7z. Never tried spanning though.

http://www.7-zip.org/
Click to expand...

I don't know what that program all does, but being 1 MB I hope it includes a spreadsheet, word processor, and browser. PKUNZIP and LHA are both around 30K. :)

Anyway, for just spanning, compressed archives or otherwise, here is SLICE.COM. It's 1904 bytes.
 
Ole Juul said:
I don't know what that program all does, but being 1 MB I hope it includes a spreadsheet, word processor, and browser. PKUNZIP and LHA are both around 30K. :)

Anyway, for just spanning, compressed archives or otherwise, here is SLICE.COM. It's 1904 bytes.
Click to expand...

It handles multiple compression techniques , like rar, 7z, zip, lha, arj etc. It MAY work with spanning, since its not the same code as winzip (also claims to be fully compatible with the zip standard, unlike winzip). It allows spanning to any preset size. BTW it is a freeware windows program, not dos. As for the file size, sure 4-5x smaller then winzip! (and faster too, not to mention no annoying lame nag screen saying buy me buy me!) :p

Been using it for years now, works even on win95. May work on 3.1x w/ win32s, not sure. Worth a shot imho, nothing ventured nothing gained. Won't know till you try it. ;)

As for pkzip for dos, 2.50 I believe was the last version. As far as I know only real difference between 2.5 and 2.04 was long file name support. Anyone know if anything else changed?
 
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7zip is nice (*on newer computers) because it supports 20 or so compression formats and is free. That way you don't have to fuss with finding a working rar, zip, arj, tar, gz, bz2, etc decompressor. Heck it can even extract data from iso files now. Yes I would use pkzip/pkunzip on older gear just from experience it was nice and free to use as well. The win versions of the above usually work for 30 days then nag the hell out of ya. I haven't tried 7zip with pkzip spanned floppies but I imagine it would support it.
 
twolazy said:
Been using it for years now, works even on win95. May work on 3.1x w/ win32s, not sure. Worth a shot imho, nothing ventured nothing gained. Won't know till you try it. ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks. It does sound like it really is a great program and is indeed much more useful than PK and LHA. :) It's probably not worth setting up a machine specially for that though.
 
+1 vote for 7zip. If you need to create zip archives (one, and pretty much the only, reason being compatibility with the DOS era tools) there is no better program in my experience. It always creates smaller archives than other tools like WinRar for example. And as far as modern archive formats go the same can be said about 7z.
 
I use SecureZIP. It's by PKWARE so you know it's compatible with all the ZIPs, old and new. Plus it does... TAR, JAR, BZ2, RAR, GZIP, CAB, LZH, LZMA, PPMd, UUEncode, XXEncode, and OpenPGP.
 
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