diff --git a/configs/galactica_1_3B.yml b/configs/galactica_1_3B.yml
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..ed722f34e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/configs/galactica_1_3B.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+base_model: facebook/galactica-1.3b
+model_type: AutoModelForCausalLM
+tokenizer_type: AutoTokenizer
+load_in_8bit: false
+datasets:
+  - path: tatsu-lab/alpaca
+    type: alpaca
+dataset_prepared_path: last_run_prepared
+val_set_size: 0.1
+adapter:
+lora_model_dir:
+sequence_len: 1024
+max_packed_sequence_len: 1024
+lora_r: 8
+lora_alpha: 16
+lora_dropout: 0.05
+lora_target_modules:
+  - q_proj
+  - v_proj
+lora_fan_in_fan_out: false
+wandb_project:
+wandb_watch:
+wandb_run_id:
+wandb_log_model: checkpoint
+output_dir: ./lora-llama-alpaca
+batch_size: 32
+micro_batch_size: 16
+num_epochs: 3
+learning_rate: 0.00003
+train_on_inputs: false
+group_by_length: false
+bf16: false
+tf32: false
+early_stopping_patience:
+resume_from_checkpoint:
+local_rank:
+special_tokens:
+  pad_token: "[PAD]"
+  bos_token: "<s>"
+  eos_token: "</s>"
+  unk_token: "<unk>"
diff --git a/src/axolotl/utils/data.py b/src/axolotl/utils/data.py
index 0804312e7..d315da98c 100644
--- a/src/axolotl/utils/data.py
+++ b/src/axolotl/utils/data.py
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ def load_prepare_datasets(tokenizer, cfg, default_dataset_prepared_path):
     ds_hash = str(
         md5(
             (
-                str(max_packed_sequence_len)
+                str(cfg.sequence_len)
                 + "@"
                 + "|".join(sorted([f"{d.path}:{d.type}" for d in cfg.datasets]))
             ).encode("utf-8")
@@ -114,21 +114,24 @@ def load_prepare_datasets(tokenizer, cfg, default_dataset_prepared_path):
                 datasets.append(ds_wrapper)
             else:
                 logging.error(f"unhandled prompt tokenization strategy: {d.type}")
-        logging.info("merging and shuffling master dataset")
+        logging.info("tokenizing, merging, and shuffling master dataset")
 
-        dataset = concatenate_datasets(datasets).shuffle(seed=42)
+        samples = []
+        for d in datasets:
+            samples = samples + [i for i in d]
+        dataset = Dataset.from_list(samples).shuffle(seed=42)
         if cfg.local_rank == 0:
             logging.info(f"Saving merged prepared dataset to disk... {prepared_ds_path}")
             dataset.save_to_disk(prepared_ds_path)
 
-        if cfg.max_packed_sequence_len is not None:
-            constant_len_dataset = ConstantLengthDataset(
-                tokenizer,
-                [dataset],
-                seq_length=max_packed_sequence_len,
-            )
-            logging.info("packing master dataset")
-            dataset = Dataset.from_list([_ for _ in constant_len_dataset])
+    if cfg.max_packed_sequence_len is not None:
+        constant_len_dataset = ConstantLengthDataset(
+            tokenizer,
+            [dataset],
+            seq_length=max_packed_sequence_len,
+        )
+        logging.info(f"packing master dataset to len: {cfg.max_packed_sequence_len}")
+        dataset = Dataset.from_list([_ for _ in constant_len_dataset])
 
     if cfg.dataset_shard_num and cfg.dataset_shard_idx is not None:
         logging.info(f"Using index #{cfg.dataset_shard_idx} of {cfg.dataset_shard_num} shards")
diff --git a/src/axolotl/utils/models.py b/src/axolotl/utils/models.py
index 6d7cbfb52..a14f89b19 100644
--- a/src/axolotl/utils/models.py
+++ b/src/axolotl/utils/models.py
@@ -161,6 +161,10 @@ def load_model(
         tokenizer.add_special_tokens({"pad_token": "[PAD]"})
         os.environ["TOKENIZERS_PARALLELISM"] = "false"
 
+    if cfg.special_tokens:
+        for k, v in cfg.special_tokens.items():
+            setattr(tokenizer, k, v)
+
     if load_in_8bit and not cfg.load_4bit:
         logging.info("converting model w/ prepare_model_for_int8_training")
         model = prepare_model_for_int8_training(model)