The Epyx Fast Load is a

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

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 discrep ...

cartridge made by American software company Epyx in 1984 for the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

home computer. It was programmed by Epyx employee Scott Nelson, who was originally a programmer for

Starpath Starpath was a U.S. company known for creating the Starpath Supercharger in August 1982. The company was founded under the name Arcadia Corporation in 1981 by Alan Bayley, Robert Brown, and Craig Nelson. It changed its name to Starpath shortly a ...

The Dot Eaters - Epyx , The Dot Eaters
''Scott Nelson, one of the former Starpath programmers, had created a decathlon game for the Supercharger called Sweat!, but when the company merges with Epyx the project is shelved.'' and later designed the Epyx Vorpal fastloading system for the company's games.

Description

Epyx Fast Load allows programs to load from the Commodore 1541 disk drive at 2,500 bytes per second, approximately five times faster than the normal speed. Since it is stored on a cartridge, and thus provides instant access without requiring any hardware modification of the C64 or the disk drive, the Fast Load quickly became a very popular

peripheral A peripheral or peripheral device is an auxiliary device used to put information into and get information out of a computer. The term ''peripheral device'' refers to all hardware components that are attached to a computer and are controlled by the ...

among C64 users. In addition to disk acceleration, the cartridge also provides a built-in version of the Commodore

DOS Wedge The DOS Wedge is a piece of Commodore 64 system software that was popular in its time. It was written by Bob Fairbairn, and was included by Commodore (CBM) on the 1541 disk drive Test/Demo Disk (filename: "DOS 5.1") and also packaged with the C ...

. This dramatically reduces the number of keystrokes needed to load or save files or perform disk operations, and makes the cartridge even more convenient. Epyx Fast Load incorporates a

machine language monitor A machine code monitor ( machine language monitor) is software that allows a user to enter commands to view and change memory locations on a computer, with options to load and save memory contents from/to secondary storage. Some full-featured m ...

. Although it does not include an assembler, as most "standard" C64 ML monitors do, it includes a wide array of powerful debugging tools. These include disassembly, single-stepping, and an automatic machine code relocator. A crude

disk editor A disk editor is a computer program that allows its user to read, edit, and write raw data (at character or hexadecimal, byte-levels) on disk drives (e.g., hard disks, USB flash disks or removable media such as a floppy disks); as such, they ...

is also included with the cartridge, which displays raw data from floppy disks in classical

hex Hex or HEX may refer to: Magic * Hex, a curse or supposed real and potentially supernaturally realized malicious wish * Hex sign, a barn decoration originating in Pennsylvania Dutch regions of the United States * Hex work, a Pennsylvania Dutch ...

+ ASCII

split screen Split screen may refer to: * Split screen (computing), dividing graphics into adjacent parts * Split screen (video production), the visible division of the screen * ''Split Screen'' (TV series), 1997–2001 * Split-Screen Level, a bug in the vid ...

mode. Among other things, the disk editor can be used to enter cheat codes and do the home computer equivalent of ROM hacking. In the unusual case of software that doesn't work with the Fast Load, the cartridge can be disabled via a menu command, thus avoiding the need to physically remove and reinsert it. While the original 1984 version of the Fast Load will not work with the SD2IEC floppy drive emulation system, newer variants of the cartridge do support it.

Reception

In a review of three Commodore 64 fast loaders, '' Ahoy!'' wrote that ''Fast Load'' "is surprisingly transparent to all the forms of commercial copy protection we have looked at ... In terms of greatest convenience and speed, we place our bets on" it. A review of five fast loaders in '' Commodore Microcomputers'' found that "''Fast Load'' performed well during testing" and approved of its ease of use and documentation. However, the table included in the article showed that the cartridge only significantly sped up loading times for four of nine applications and games, not benefiting the others.

References

External links

{{Commonscat, Epyx Fast Load Cartridge
Epyx Fast Load instruction manual
from Project64
RUN MagazinIssue 56 Exploring Epyx Fast Load for the Commodore 64
1984 software Home computer peripherals Commodore 64 software Commodore 64