Fast Loader

[jkotlinski]

I think it would be really practical and nice, if Durexforth had a built-in fast loader. Epecially so for the cartridge version. I'm particularly interested in 1541 support, but other drives might be a nice option.

My interest in this comes from my own personal use case: I have a "1541 Ultimate II" with Durexforth flashed as a cartridge. I also like to play old games. Without a fast-loader, loading is painfully slow.

[Whammo]

Transwarp?
https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Transwarp

[Whammo]

Auto-start might be cool too.

[lonetech]

By comments in disk.asm, loadb and saveb may already be sped up if using accelerators like JiffyDOS. included uses its own BIOS read loop, though I'm not sure if it's more likely to be bottlenecked by those than compilation. For the 1541 Ultimate II in particular, there's a Command Interface for talking to Ultimate DOS. That documentation might be enough to write specialized routines, likely both faster and easier than BIOS routines.
Edit: The Ultimate II has a kernal patch called Hyperspeed Kernal that does use that interface.

[Whammo]

Found this:
Here: http://www.ffd2.com/fridge/io/irqloader.s

[Whammo]

This one too.
https://github.com/mist64/fastboot1541

[Whammo]

Running code in one of the drives RAM buffers to transmit a sector loaded into another buffer in two bit synchronous fashion as fast as the slowest side can manage. Piece of cake.