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The Epyx FastLoad is a floppy disk
Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangle plastic shell....
 fast loader
Fast loader

A fast loader is a software program for a home computer - most commonly, the Commodore 64 - that accelerates the speed of file loading from the floppy disk drive....
 cartridge
Cartridge (electronics)

In various types of electronic equipment, a cartridge can refer to one method of adding different functionality or content; for example, a video game played on a video game console; or a method by which consumables may be replenished, such as an ink cartridge for a printer....
 made by American software company Epyx
Epyx

Epyx, Inc. was a video game video game developer and video game publisher in the late 1970s and entire 1980s. The company was founded as Automated Simulations by Jim Connelley and Jon Freeman, originally using Epyx as a brand name for action-oriented games before renaming the company to match in 1983....
 in 1984 for the Commodore 64
Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore International in August, 1982, at a price of United States dollar595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes of Random-access memory with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of tha...
 home computer
Home computer

A home computer was a class of personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as accessible personal computers, more capable than video game consoles....
. 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
Commodore 1541

The Commodore 1541 , made by Commodore International, was the best-known floppy disk drive for the Commodore 64 home computer. The 1541 was a single-sided 170 kilobyte drive for 5?" disks....
 disk drive approximately five times faster than the normal speed.






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Encyclopedia


The Epyx FastLoad is a floppy disk
Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangle plastic shell....
 fast loader
Fast loader

A fast loader is a software program for a home computer - most commonly, the Commodore 64 - that accelerates the speed of file loading from the floppy disk drive....
 cartridge
Cartridge (electronics)

In various types of electronic equipment, a cartridge can refer to one method of adding different functionality or content; for example, a video game played on a video game console; or a method by which consumables may be replenished, such as an ink cartridge for a printer....
 made by American software company Epyx
Epyx

Epyx, Inc. was a video game video game developer and video game publisher in the late 1970s and entire 1980s. The company was founded as Automated Simulations by Jim Connelley and Jon Freeman, originally using Epyx as a brand name for action-oriented games before renaming the company to match in 1983....
 in 1984 for the Commodore 64
Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore International in August, 1982, at a price of United States dollar595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes of Random-access memory with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of tha...
 home computer
Home computer

A home computer was a class of personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as accessible personal computers, more capable than video game consoles....
. It was programmed by Epyx employee Scott Nelson, who later designed the Epyx Vorpal fastloading system for the company's games.
Epyx Fastload
Epyx FastLoad allowed programs to load from the Commodore 1541
Commodore 1541

The Commodore 1541 , made by Commodore International, was the best-known floppy disk drive for the Commodore 64 home computer. The 1541 was a single-sided 170 kilobyte drive for 5?" disks....
 disk drive approximately five times faster than the normal speed. Since it was stored on a cartridge
Cartridge (electronics)

In various types of electronic equipment, a cartridge can refer to one method of adding different functionality or content; for example, a video game played on a video game console; or a method by which consumables may be replenished, such as an ink cartridge for a printer....
, and thus provided instant access without requiring any hardware modification of the C64 or disk drive, the FastLoad quickly became a very popular peripheral
Peripheral

A peripheral is a device attached to a host computer behind the chipset whose primary functionality is dependent upon the host, and can therefore be considered as expanding the hosts capabilities, while not forming part of the system's core computer architecture....
 among C64 users.

In addition to disk acceleration, the cartridge also provided a built-in version of the Commodore DOS Wedge
DOS Wedge

The DOS Wedge was a popular piece of Commodore 64 system software. Written by Bob Fairbairn, it was included by Commodore International on the Commodore 1541 Test/Demo Disk and also packaged with the Commodore 64 Macro Assembler Development System ....
. 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
Commodore 128

The Commodore 128 home computer/personal computer was the last 8-bit machine commercially released by Commodore International . Introduced in January of 1985 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas metropolitan area, it appeared three years after its predecessor, the bestselling Commodore 64....
, the computer would automatically boot into "C64" mode upon startup.

Epyx FastLoad incorporated a machine language monitor. Although it did not include an assembler
Assembly language

An assembly language is a low-level language for programming computers. It implements a symbolic representation of the numeric machine codes and other constants needed to program a particular CPU architecture....
, as most "standard" C64 ML monitors did, it included a wide array of powerful debugging tools. These included disassembly
Disassembler

A disassembler is a computer program that translates machine language into assembly language?the inverse operation to that of an Assembly language#Assembler....
, single-stepping, and an automatic machine code relocator.

A crude disk editor
Disk editor

A disk editor is a computer program that allows its user to read, edit, and write raw data on disk drives ; as such, they are sometimes called sector editors, since the read/write routines built into the electronics of most disk drives require to read/write data in chunks of disk sectors ....
 was also included with the cartridge, which displayed raw data from floppy disks in classical hex
Hex editor

A hex editor is a type of computer program that allows a user to manipulate Binary file computer files. Hex editors that were designed to edit Disk sector, or parse, data from floppy disk or hard disks were sometimes called sector editors or disk editors....
+ASCII
PETSCII

PETSCII , also known as CBM ASCII, is the variation of the ASCII character set used in Commodore International's 8-bit home computers, starting with the Commodore PET from 1977 and including the Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64, Commodore CBM-II, Commodore Plus/4, Commodore 16, Commodore 116 and Commodore 128....
 split screen
Split screen (computer graphics)

Split screen is a display technique in computer graphics that consists of dividing graphics and/or text into non-movable adjacent parts, typically two or four rectangle areas....
 mode. Among other things, the disk editor was used to enter cheat codes and do the home computer variant of ROM hacking
ROM hacking

ROM hacking is the process of modifying a video game ROM image to alter the game's graphics, dialogue, levels, gameplay, or other gameplay elements....
.

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.

External links

  • – From The Commodore Experience Website, by F. Yarra (transcription courtesy of Project64)


  • – From The Epyx Shrine, by Cybergoth