Fast Loader
A fast loader is a software program for a home computer, such as the Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum, that accelerates the speed of file loading from floppy disk or compact cassette. Floppy disks Fast loaders came about because of a discrepancy between the actual speed at which floppy drives could transfer data and the speed that was provided by the operating system's default routines. This discrepancy was most pronounced on the VIC-20 and Commodore 64. While the earlier Commodore PET series had used an industry-standard IEEE-488 parallel bus, this was replaced with a custom Commodore serial bus on the VIC-20. The serial bus was intended to be nearly as fast as its predecessor, due to the use of the 6522 VIA as a hardware shift register on both the drive and computer. However, hardware bugs were discovered in the 6522 that prevented this function from working consistently. As a result, the KERNAL ROM routines were hastily rewritten to transfer a single bit at a time, using ...
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