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Epyx Fast Load Cartridge

Captain Midnight

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 3, 2010
Messages
52
This is a pretty simple question, but in the estimation of those on the forum, is picking one of these up worth it?
 
Personally, I have one and don't use it. When I play my C64 I don't mind if it needs to load for a bit, and disks don't take *that* long. It could be that my drives are already enhanced in some way I'm not aware of, though.

If it's cheap, though, I'd say go for it. There are alternatives, though - JiffyDOS on the disk drive, alternative third party disk drives, and other fastloading carts like "The Final Cartridge" (I have version III). It's not really as simple as yes or no, heh.
 
They should not cost too much, might as well try one out. I have a couple of them found with some freecycle C64 gear and have used them.
 
While it won't offer as much turbo as some of the later cartridges and hardware speeders, I have got the impression the Epyx cartridge is leaner to the system. It means it won't interfer as much with custom loaders etc, but I could be wrong.
 
I'm going back a ways now - trying to recall from the mid 80's - but I remember having a two disk drive system and I grew weary of the long load times until I bought Epyx Fast Load cart. I really found it improved the speed a lot! If you are a once in a while C64 user - then it isn't all that important, but for intensive disk use, it is. (Just my experiences.)
I haven't been following them lately, but on eBay they usually sell in the $5. - $15. range.
 
The fast load cartridge was my first cartridge. Later I got a Supersnapshot which had a freezer and other utilities. The Epyx Fast Load was ok, very basic, but many programs would override it very easily and it wouldn't load so fast. Supers Snapshot was a lot better. But the opinion that I have gatherered is that getting JiffyDOS would be the best way to load programs faster. I assume that is what you are trying to do. Epyx Fast Load is ok and worth a collectible, but in my opinion not worth it for fast loading for everything. If you want more like the ability to freeze programs and do other stuff then get something like Super Snapshot or Action Replay or many others like it.

Hope this helps ! :)
 
What exactly do these do? I know most accelerator cards just put complex but commonly used commands into hardware so they could be more quickly ececuted but the 64 kinda predates when this as it natively runs BASIC and machine code which you can't really speed up and is both already interpreted in hardware.
 
If you can get one, I think Cinemaware's Warp Speed was tons better than Fast Load. Lots more stuff in it besides just fast loader as well.
 
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