Epyx FastLoad
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The Epyx FastLoad is a floppy disk fast loader cartridge made by American software company Epyx in 1984 for the Commodore 64 home computer. It was programmed by Epyx employee Scott Nelson, who later designed the Epyx Vorpal fastloading system for the company's games.
Epyx FastLoad allowed programs to load from the Commodore 1541 disk drive approximately five times faster than the normal speed. Since it was stored on a cartridge, and thus provided instant access without requiring any hardware modification of the C64 or disk drive, the FastLoad quickly became a very popular peripheral among C64 users.
In addition to disk acceleration, the cartridge also provided a built-in version of the Commodore DOS Wedge. This dramatically reduced the number of keystrokes needed to load or save files or perform disk operations, and made the cartridge even more convenient.
When used in a Commodore 128, the computer would automatically boot into "C64" mode upon startup.
Epyx FastLoad incorporated a machine language monitor. Although it did not include an assembler, as most "standard" C64 ML monitors did, it included a wide array of powerful debugging tools. These included disassembly, single-stepping, and an automatic machine code relocator.
A crude disk editor was also included with the cartridge, which displayed raw data from floppy disks in classical hex+ASCII split screen mode. Among other things, the disk editor was used to enter cheat codes and do the home computer variant of ROM hacking.
In the unusual case of software that wouldn't work with the FastLoad, the cartridge could be disabled via a menu command, thus avoiding the need to physically remove and reinsert it. The overall quality and transparency of this peripheral made it so easy to use and unobtrusive that many users left it in the C64 continuously throughout the entire operational life of the machine.
[edit] External links
- Epyx FastLoad instruction manual – From The Commodore Experience Website, by F. Yarra (transcription courtesy of Project64)
- Interview with Scott Nelson – From The Epyx Shrine, by Cybergoth
