UNAR6

UNAR6 is a multi-language AR6 archive extractor/tester for retro DOS ecosystems.

What Is AR6

AR6 (Archiv602) is a legacy DOS archive format used by Manažer M602. The Manažer M602 documentation on Czech Wikipedia explicitly describes built-in support for AR6 (Archiv602) archives.

• Manažer M602 (CZ): https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mana%C5%BEer_M602
• Manažer M602 (Wikidata): https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q12035187

Historical context:

• Manažer M602 was a DOS file manager in the Software602 product line.

• AR6 (Archiv602) was the native archive format used directly in M602.

• This project documents AR6 by reverse engineering real M602 archives.

• Software602 (CZ): https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software602

Implementations

• unar6.c - Turbo C 3.0 target
• unar6.pas - Turbo Pascal 6.0 target
• unar6.py - modern reference implementation

Commands

All implementations follow old DOS unarchiver style commands:

• l list archive contents
• t test archive integrity (decompress + CRC check)
• x extract with paths
• e extract without paths

Common options:

• -o overwrite existing files
• -n never overwrite existing files (default)
• -q quiet output
• -v verbose output
• -d<dir> output directory

Examples

python3 unar6.py l archive.ar6
python3 unar6.py t archive.ar6
python3 unar6.py x -dout archive.ar6
python3 unar6.py e archive.ar6 out_flat

DOS style (intended):

UNAR6 L ARCHIVE.AR6
UNAR6 T ARCHIVE.AR6
UNAR6 X -DOUT ARCHIVE.AR6
UNAR6 E ARCHIVE.AR6 OUTFLAT

Format docs

• AR6_FORMAT.en.md
• AR6_FORMAT.de.md
• AR6_FORMAT.sk.md
• AR6_FORMAT.cs.md

GitHub Publishing Scope

For the public repository, keep only:

• source files: unar6.c, unar6.pas, unar6.py
• documentation: README.md, AR6_FORMAT*.md

Do not include:

• test archives and extracted samples
• compiled binaries and cache folders