The Epyx FastLoad is a floppy disk

Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...

 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.- Background :...

 cartridge made by American software company Epyx

Epyx

Epyx, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher in the late 1970s and throughout the 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 introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...

 home computer

Home computer

Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...

. 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 5¼" disks...

 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

Peripheral

A peripheral is a device attached to a host computer, but not part of it, and is more or less dependent on the host. It expands the host's capabilities, but does not form part of the 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 on the 1541 disk drive Test/Demo Disk and also packaged with the C64 Macro Assembler...

. This dramatically reduced the number of keystrokes needed to load or save files or perform disk operations, and made the cartridge even more convenient.

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

Disassembler

A disassembler is a computer program that translates machine language into assembly language—the inverse operation to that of an assembler. A disassembler differs from a decompiler, which targets a high-level language rather than an assembly language...

, single-stepping, and an automatic machine code relocator

Relocation (computer science)

"Relocation is the process of assigning load addresses to various parts of [a] program and adjusting the code and data in the program to reflect the assigned addresses."...

.

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...

 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 the fundamental binary data that makes up computer files. Note that computer files can be very small to very large...

+ASCII

PETSCII

PETSCII , also known as CBM ASCII, is the variation of the ASCII character set used in Commodore Business Machines 's 8-bit home computers, starting with the PET from 1977 and including the VIC-20, C64, CBM-II, Plus/4, C16, C116 and C128...

 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 rectangular areas. This is done in order to allow the simultaneous presentation of related graphical and textual information on a computer...

 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 elements. This is usually done by technically inclined video game fans to breathe new life into a cherished old game, as a creative outlet, or to make essentially new...

.

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.

External links

• Epyx FastLoad instruction manual – courtesy of Project64