Downloading and Dearchiving

This information is intended for new users who may be unfamiliar with the process of downloading files or getting them into a usable form. Experienced users will probably know all of this already.

This advice is naturally biased towards users of Acorn machines. To handle archive files on PC machines, use PKZIP or WinZip. To manipulate Spark archive files on Unix machines and some others, use nspark.

Downloading

To download the file simply use your browser to download it to your local machine. How to do this will depend on which browser you are using, although you should be able to do so by simply clicking on the file's icon or name (you may need to hold down Shift while clicking on the icon). In almost all browsers, a standard file save box will appear from which you can save the file to disc.

If your Acorn machine is not directly connected to the Internet then you will need to get the file onto it via another medium. The best way of doing this is to copy it from your Internet machine onto a DOS-format floppy disc. It is important that the file gets downloaded and transferred without any changes whatosever; some points to watch are:

If you download the file onto a PC in order to copy it to a DOS-format floppy disc, then take care with the DOS copy command. Always use File Manager or Explorer from within Windows, or use the copy command with the /B switch.
If you have to move the file around via FTP then ensure that it is set to BINARY mode.
Certain versions of Netscape seem to have trouble downloading binary files. If you just click on the link then the browser will try to display the file on the screen (in a completely unintelligible form, of course): PC versions will try to convert line endings in the process, which will destroy the archive.
To download an archive file using Netscape (whether you are using a PC or workstation version), first try simply clicking on the link. If all is well you should be presented with a file save dialogue which you can use in the normal way. If the browser starts to display unintelligible text, then abort the transfer and then force it to save the the file to disc by either pressing Shift while clicking on the original link or by using the Save Link As... function on the popup menu.

Dearchiving

Once you have got the archive file onto your Acorn computer then you will need to use a dearchiving program to extract the individual directories and files within it. There are a number of these available:

SparkFS is (in my humble opinion) the best. As well as standard archive files it can handle many other formats including PKZIP (as used in the PC world); ARCFS and PACKDIR (rival Acorn formats); UUENCODE, GZIP, TAR and COMPRESS (from Unix); STUFFIT (probably the only standard Macintosh format) as well as other exotic formats such as ZOO, LZH and ARJ.
SparkFS is a commercial product from David Pilling, costing about £23 and worth every penny.
SparkPlug is a restricted (extract-only) version of SparkFS, which costs nothing and can be freely distributed. You can find a copy on the Acorn User #2 CD (and probably most others as well), or download it from here.
ArcFS is the other full-featured archive program. It doesn't attempt to handle all of the file formats that SparkFS does: it uses its own archive file format and file type, which is really annoying to users of SparkFS and makes using the two applications together very frustrating.
ArcFS can read SparkFS archives (and vice versa). Some people think that it's faster than SparkFS, although I don't think the difference is really noticeable.
The full version of ArcFS (also sometimes called ArcFS 2 or ArcFSr/w) is a commercial product by Mark Smith.
An extract-only version of ArcFS (which may be freely distributed) can be found on most magazine discs and CDs, or downloaded from here.

After you have installed and run a dearchiving program, the downloaded archive file should appear with an appropriate icon (looking like this [Image]

if you are using SparkFS or SparkPlug, or [Image]

for ArcFS). If this is not the case then set its file type to DDC (for SparkFS or SparkPlug) or 3FB (for ArcFS). Then simply double-click on the file, which should open a directory display showing the contents of the archive. Select all of the items (in the same way as in a normal Filer window) and drag them to another directory display: this will copy them out of the archive, decompressing them in the process. When this has finished there will be a copy of the application on disc, which you can then run in the normal way.

Disclaimer

All of the information on this page regarding the various archive programs is my personal opinion only. It should not be taken as authority on the facilities or features offered, distribution conditions, price or availability of any product.

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Page by Jonathan Marten
Last modified: Fri May 13 10:58:17 BST 2005