Today I wanted to take a look at FastCompress 1.4, a recently released utility for AmigaOS4.

FastCompress is a utility written by Guillaume 'zzd10h' Boesel and is available for free on www.os4depot.net . The utility allows you to right click on a folder, file (or multiple of each) and then select to compress the selection to a LHA, LZX, ZIP or 7ZIP compressed file, automatically named.

This right click to compress to ZIP functionality is very familiar for Windows owners, but until now was not on AmigaOS4. I previously used a utility called Cranu to do this compression jobs via a GUI but was nowhere near as efficient.

Before you install FastCompress, it is important to install MUI NList.mcc (I already had this installed but it is available to download from OS4Depot.net if you need it).

In addition, Fast Compress also needs a separate piece of software called png_im, which is also available on www.os4depot.net . I didn't have this so I downloaded it! Once downloaded, I extracted the png_im.lha archive to RAM: as below:

I next read the readme, which states I need to copy the png.iconmodule file to LIBS:IconModules/ and reboot:

When I checked the libs: folder from the Shell, I found that (for me anyway) the IconModules folder did not exist. So I created it (makedir LIBS:IconModules), and then copied the file required in the Shell (as below) and rebooted the X1000:

Having done this, I then extracted FastCompress archive I downloaded to RAM: so I could get started installing FastCompress itself:

Inside the extracted FastCompress folder is the installer and ReadMe, which explains how to do the manual installation - although of course I fully intend to use the installer:

So after running the installer, we then walk through the install process for FastCompress. There are a few options to select along the way - so I want to show you what to expect. The first few screens are normal installer screens:

The next screen prompts us for the install location, and default to SYS:Utilities, which is where I installed it:

Then it will ask if you want to install FastLHA, FastLZX, FastZIP and Fast7z. These components are the core of Fastcompress and execute the compression of the files you select. I installed all of them, which is the default option on each screen here:

After that, the installer will ask if you want to integrate the tools into the Right Mouse Button Contextual menu (ie. the menu that appears when you right click on something on AmigaOS4. I answered Yes:

The next question asked by the installer appears to be added if this is an upgrade installation. I answered No here. BTW if you answer Yes it will ask you to remove the lines added into a config file to allow the FastCompress right mouse click to work before you can proceed:

Next it will prompt for what you want the right click Menu option to be called. I aceepted the default name Compression:

Now the installer goes awat any modifies the ENVARC:ContextMenus.cfg file to add in the right click menu options for FastCompress:

The installer then asks if you want to verify the changes made, which I did:

When this config file window is closed, the installer continues and prompts to reboot the X1000 now, which I said was ok to proceed:

After the reboot, we are ready to try it out. First I select Notepad in the Utilities folder, right clicked and select Compression > FastLHA option, as below:

Next I now get a progress window showing the compression progress in FastLHA, the filename title, time to complete, and other details relating to the compression task:

As you can see it took one second to complete. I closed this progress window since the job was completed (there is an option to automatically close this window in the tooltypes of FastLHA).

Looking back in the Utilities folder I now have the LHA file just created:

I then opened the LHA archive and extracted to RAM to run and confirm the file works fine - success!

I then tested other files with FastZIP and Fast7z options on the right click menu, also successful (as below):

So next I tried something a lot bigger, with folders and multiple PDF files inside:

I then extracted the pdf's to RAM and checked they worked ok - all good!

FastCompress is free, fast, works as advertised and is recommended for AmigaOS4 users.

Guillaume has also released some other utilities on OS4depot recently and I will be trying them out too shortly!