The Compressor (John Lauro)

File Format
Name	The Compressor (John Lauro)
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Archiving The Compressor (John Lauro)
Extension(s)	.arc, .tc
Released	~1987

The Compressor (TC) is an archiving utility and format, apparently for the TRS-80 Color Computer. It was developed by John Lauro.

Archive member files may use RLE compression, or no compression.

Some versions of TC have their own name, such as TC3, TC31, TC12.

Identification

Files start with byte 0x01 (sequence number), and have 0x01 (format version) at offset 14. There are also other fields that could be checked for sensible values.

Specifications

• Refer to the UnTC source code for details about the format.

Software

• The Compressor
  • rtsi.com FTP archive → RSDOS/UTIL/...
    • TC40.BIN
    • TC3.BIN or tc.bin
    • TC12.BIN
    • tc512k.bin
  • TRS-80 Color Computer Archive → Search for "compressor" → ... (disk images)
• UnTC, by Tim Koonce (includes source code, and OS-9 binary):
  • at Microware OS-9 Archive
  • rtsi.com FTP archive → OS9/OS9_6X09/ARCHIVERS/unTC.lzh
• Deark

Sample files

• Many .ARC files at rtsi.com FTP archive
  • E.g. RSDOS/GRAPHICS/{ASCIIART.ARC, HEADROOM.ARC}

Links

• [1] - Has some info.