GifBlast for The Amiga

With  the  arrival  of  the AGA chip set, GIF is rapidly becoming a popular
file  format  on  the  Amiga.   So naturally, it is important to be able to
archive  these  files  as  efficiently  as  possible.   And  where raw file
compression  is  concearned,  nothing  comes  close  to  GifBlast  (~30% on
average).

While  browsing  through  the days load of new files on my favourite BBS, I
stumbled  into the source code for this popular PC program, so I decided to
prepare a version for the Amiga.  This is the result.  Finally, Amiga users
can enjoy the benefits of loss-less GIF compression!

There  are  two  versions  enclosed  in  this archive.  One for plain 68000
machines,  and  one  for those with more processor power (68020 or higher).
You  can  get an overview of the syntax for GifBlast by entering "GifBlast"
on  its own.  As of yet there is no GUI frontend for the program, nor is it
particulary useful for WB users.

Please  note that I make no representations whatsoever, as to the usability
of  these executables, as I did not write any of the source code.  I simply
compiled  the  existing source program with my own C compiler, to obtain an
Amiga  executable.   However,  I  have  tested  GifBlast  on my own [68040]
system, and it performs very well.

Oh,  one final note:  Arm yourself with a lot of patience.  Unless you have
at  least  a  030  running  at  a  decent  speed, you can expect some quite
staggering compression and decompression times.  GifBlast isn't exactly the
worlds fastest program :-)

Happy crunching!

(Sysops,  please  leave this message in the archive, so that new users will
know the background of the Amiga version of GifBlast)

-Michael Berg, 2:230/816.8@FidoNet

 PERMSSN    UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO     CRC       STAMP          NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
[generic]                15183   30676  49.5% -lh5- 84fe Feb 27  1993 GifBlast.68000
[generic]                15033   30440  49.4% -lh5- a0cc Feb 27  1993 GifBlast.68020
[generic]                  954    1766  54.0% -lh5- f36a Feb 27  1993 GifBlast.amiga.note
[generic]                  169     321  52.6% -lh5- 00d9 Sep  4  1999 Falling
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ -------------
 Total         4 files   31339   63203  49.6%            Apr  8  1994