EDI Install archive

EDI Install archive refers to a compressed file format associated with later versions of the EDI Install Pro installation software for Windows 3.x. EDI Install Pro was developed by Eschalon Development and Robert Salesas.

Discussion
This format might also be named something like "ARCV version 1". For ARCV version 2, see Eschalon Setup archive.

The documentation implies that the format was introduced in EDI Install Pro v2.8. It is the successor of EDI Install packed file.

Registered users of the software received an ARCHIVE.EXE utility to create such files, and a redistributable EXTRACT.EXE utility to decompress them individually.

The default file extension is .$00. In case of a name conflict, .$01, .$02, etc., will be used.

The format also supports file splitting. Fragmented files use extensions .@00, .@01, etc.

Identification
Files start with bytes.

The only known values for the byte at offset 4 (low byte of format version number?) are  and.

The byte at offset 5 is the high byte of the format version number. For version, see Eschalon Setup archive.

ASCII "" appears at the offset given by the two-byte integer (or byte?) at offset 6.

Software
Decompression:
 * Topware Megapack 5 → Windows Shareware Welt.iso → WINCD/TOP3/TOP3001.ZIP → EXTRACT.EXE - v1.02
 * → AMATEDEM.ZIP → EXTRACT.EXE - v1.10
 * → EXTRACT.EXE - v1.20

Compression:
 * PowerPlay CD-ROM (September 1995) → special/disk1/bitmap/anw16/archive.exe - v1.10
 * → bbb/256/archive.exe - v1.20

EDI Install distributions:
 * (evaluation version)