UltraCompressor II

Revision as of 16:31, 21 September 2021

UltraCompressor II (UC2) is a 1990s-era compression and archiving program for the PC platform (DOS, Windows, OS/2, DesqView) which claimed to be both faster and more compact than other compression systems. It had special support for OS/2 extended attributes. It was a commercial program released as a "try-before-you-buy" download. It was developed by Ad Infinitum Programs (AIP-NL).

Related tools

UC2SEA

Some versions (the Pro versions?) of UC2 include UC2SEA, a utility for making self-extracting UC2 archives.

UCEXE

Some versions (the Pro versions?) of UC2 include UCEXE, an executable compression utility. It can compress (at least) DOS EXE files, and COM files (converting them to EXE).

Identification

UC2 archives start with ASCII "UC2", followed 0x1a.

A likely signature for both UC2SEA and UCEXE formats is "UC2X" at offset 28.

Software

Note that a designation like "UltraCompressor II revision 3" is roughly the same as "UltraCompressor version 2.3".

• UltraCompressor II for DOS
  • UC2 original release (1994-01-01?) (another source)
  • UC2 Revision 2 (1994-07-01?)
  • UC2 Revision 3 (1995-06-01?)
  • UC2 Revision 3 Pro
  • UC2 Revision 3.05-beta (1995?)
  • UltraCompressor version 2.37-beta (1996?)

Sample files

• https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/archive/ultraCompressor2/

References

• UltraCompressor II info
• An author's website which includes a link to the source code.
• Archived copy of AIPNL website