This documents purpose is to descripe how to use SiDeRs simple RLL-compressing in your
65CM project.

N.B: This is usable on ALL 6502 plattforms!!!


When should this be used?

Anywhere you need to "stream" down one or several chunks of data that you want your
program to be able to access in sequence.

Many programs on the target platforms contain graphics-, text- and/or music-data.
This kind of information is often very packable.

Thats why this software also applies a simple compression ( RLL-type ) on the chunks
of data.


How do I use it?

1. First produce the file(s) containing the data you want to compress.
2. Now run RLLencod on all files that shall be included in the package.

Example:

Lets say you want two pictures in your package, called "bitmap1.cbm" and "bitmap2.cbm".

At the dosprompt do:
RllEncod bitmap1.cbm bitmap1.rll
RllEncod bitmap2.cbm bitmap2.rll

3. Now add a starting address to your .RLL files ( so that the unpacking routine shall
know where in memory the pictures shall be uncompressed. )

Example ( continuing ):

AddAddr bitmap1.rll bitmap1.rla 2000
AddAddr bitmap2.rll bitmap2.rla 2000


N.B: Addresses given to the util "AddAddr" are in HEX.


Now you have two compressed files with a header that tell the unpacker, where in
memory they will go.

4. Now use MS-DOS copy command to merge those two files into one, that will become your
graphics package.

Example ( continuing ):

copy bitmap1.rla /b + bitmap2.rla /b package.rlp /b

N.B: The "/b" switch tells the copy-command to treat the files as binaries, when
merging them. DON'T FORGET IT, otherwise COPY will think those two files are ascii
text-files, and you will have an unusable package.


Your package is called "package.rlp" in this example.

The package is now ready, and you can use a platform-file-header utility to add a
suitable header to the package, that will allow it to be loaded into the part of
the memory where you want it loaded.


HackZ0id / SiDeRs