RKIVE

RKIVE is a compressed archive utility, and its native .rkv file format. It was developed by Malcolm Taylor, and released as shareware. It is the predecessor of RK.

An RKV file is not necessarily compatible with any version RKIVE other than the one that created it.

See also RK.

Disambiguation
For the utility called "Standalone RKIVE v2.00 universal compressor", see RKUC.

For the utility called "Standalone RKIVE v2.00 image compressor", see RK Image.

Identification
v1.0, v1.1: No known distinguishing features.

v1.2, v1.3, v1.4: The last byte of the file encodes the version number: 0x40 for v1.2, 0x41 for v1.3, 0x46 for v1.4. The byte needs to be XORed with 0x52 to make sense; this results in 0x12, 0x13, 0x14. The error messages given by v1.4 leave no doubt that this is how the last byte is interpreted.

v1.92beta1: Files end with a 2-byte signature: ASCII "". Note that this does not distinguish them from RK format. The two bytes preceding the signature contain version information, in a BCD-like encoding, quite different from RK format. For v1.92beta1, the bytes are always. But if any other versions of the software exist that use this variant of the file format, the bytes will be different.

Software

 * RKIVE - DOS binaries
 * (1996-08-09)
 * RKIVE 1.1 (1996-08-15)
 * RKIVE 1.2 (1996-08-31)
 * RKIVE 1.3 (1996-09-28): DP Tool Club CD ASC #03, 08, 31-34 → CDASC_33_1996_novembre.iso → DOS/TOOLS/RKIVE13.ZIP
 * (1996-10-30)
 * RKIVE 1.92beta1 (1998-02-22)