I see there is a dangerous misunderstanding! I downloaded some .SAD.GZ disk images from ftp.nvg and I see those files are about 5% longer than they should be. I did some investigation, but found nothing special - those files are valid .SAD.GZ files.
The problem is that somebody who packed those files though that he can pack it anyhow to get good result. But this is false! I think when you (or just somebody) converts .SAD images to SAD.GZ, you should use my "2sad" conversion program. "2sad" is freely available since 1999!!! from ftp.nvg !!! Current version is 1.0 available in binary form for Win32 and DOS, also compatible with PC/DOS emulators. The only difference between using regular gzip and 2sad is that 2sad is based on zlib library which is set to a bit different parameters. In result - although both programs use the same compression algorithm compatible with each other - 2sad makes much smaller files. Even if you set compression parameters -9 -n to get the smallest files from gzip, your files are much longer that files generated by 2sad. Unfortunately neither of this parameters was used by a strange person who put many .SAD.GZ files to ftp.nvg. Strange people are these Sam users ;-) Please think twice before you pack next time! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! --- Aley Keprt P.S. ASCD 0.83 (without AIR but with many new features) will be available later this or next month. WIP (work-in-progress) source is available anytime, but isn't very usable (obviously).
