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r.fastload
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2022-08-26
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Review of
FASTLOAD from EPYX
Reviewed by: Roy A. Olsen, Jr
1730 Winfield Ave
Indianapolis, Indiana
46222
When I plugged my new FASTLOAD
cartridge in, I was surprised to see
that it didn't use any memory. The
only visible difference was the
appearance of the word FASTLOAD under
the READY prompt.
Another nice surprise was having a
WEDGE ready at all times. The FASTLOAD
wedge supports all of the DOS 5.1
commands except for ^prgmname (run
program). Holding shift and pressing
run/stop automatically does a
LOAD"*",8,1:RUN. So far I have not
found one program that could not be
loaded with FASTLOAD.
Faster? YES! Flight Simulator II
normally takes nearly three minutes to
load. With FASTLOAD it took less than
two minutes. Programs written in BASIC
load even faster. Eliza normally took
fifty two seconds. FASTLOAD reduced
it to twelve seconds.
If the built in wedge and faster
loading weren't enough there is also a
copy program, file editing program,
track and sector editor and machine
code monitor built in. These can be
accessed by pressing "\" while in
basic mode. Having these handy
utilities on tap at all times is very
handy. By the way, the copy program
will not copy protected disks.
I am impressed with the FASTLOAD
cartridge. I have found no serious (or
even minor) flaws in it. It has made
using the 1541 much faster and easier
for me. I give it five stars.
>We at LOADSTAR do indeed use FASTLOAD
a great deal. We agree with Roy in
that FASTLOAD is a fantastic product,
but we have found what can be a
problem. It does not allow you to
change the default device number.
Therefore, if you have two drives,
you can not access your second drive
with FASTLOAD. The DOS WEDGE allows
you to chage device numbers with a
@#X where X is the new device number.
We have also found that FASTLOAD does
not work with a few programs. Among
these are BLITZ! BASIC COMPILER, and
a utility program called TINY AID.
We have also found that FASTLOAD does
NOT work with an MSD-SD2. We do not
know if it will work with a single
drive MSD.
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