Closed EPYX or Final Cart III for C64..

Robofruit

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Hi,

After a bit of advice and to buy one of the above depending on said advice. I basically just want to speed load and was wondering which option is better and if anybody has one for sale.

Thanks in advance.

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There is a real good deal on eBay going on right now! (Freeweb) Original.


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They are both good cartridges. If you want simpler DOS commands then the EPYX cartridge gives you commands that are easier to type than the FCIII commands. FCIII has additional features but if you don't care about those then the EPYX may be the way to go.

Heather
 
Buying an EPYX reloaded on a bidding site, this thread can be closed off. Thanks.

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the best speedload option of course is JiffyDos....
 
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the best speedload option of course is JiffyDos....

agreed

what a lot of people forget is the speed load carts only speed up the 1st program loaded,

for example you load menu.prg then the menu program loads commando.prg at normal slow speed. or you load any game off disc and the loading screen / music loads fast then the rest of the game at normal slow speed.

carts are only good for 1file compressed (ripped) prg files.

jiffydos however speeds up all disk routines so everything is faster.


advantages of carts,
plug and play and they software patch your 1541 etc for 1 file speed load perfect for action reply etc 1 file images or 1file prg files.

advantages of jiffydos
your cart slot is free
you can switch between jiffydos and CBMdos via a switch (datasette routines removed in jiffydos so new jiffy commands fit)
SD2IEC sd card solutions have (or should have) jiffy support built in.

disadvantages to jiffydos
you have to open you C64 and replace the basic ROM with a switchable jiffy Eprom
you have to replace the ROM in your 1541 etc disk drive to support jiffydos
 
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I agree that JiffyDOS is great and it's primarily what I use.

what a lot of people forget is the speed load carts only speed up the 1st program loaded,
I know for a fact that the FCIII does not have this limitation. You can always tell when the speed load routines are running on the FCIII as it blanks the screen during loading. (y)

Heather
 
fairly sure it's *only* true if the program loaded kicks the fastloading routines out of memory (though I would assume this would be at least 50/50)(though its probably worth noting that with the C64 especially, you have to reboot the system to load a new program about 99.9+% of the time, particularly with commercial software...which then 'reloads' the fastloader anyways)

(note: the bottom of the linked comparision page does mention this: Cartridges typically do not speed up sequential write/read (actually, this refers to CHRIN/ACPTR/CHROUT/CIOUT kernal routines used mostly by multiload games and applications) but often feature quite fast LOAD routines)

since JiffyDos is actually replacing the original commodore DOS it isn't affected in quite the same way as a cart which boots routines into ram (or of course software speedloaders which have to be loaded every time you want to load a program generally, and aren't a lot of use)

I have owned Epyx Fastload, FCIII and Mach128 carts and all have worked acceptably well, I also have a BetterWorking Turbo Load and Save, but i haven't really bothered with it (I think it is probably on a par with the Epyx FastLoad)

Compatibility is also very high with JiffyDos (some programs fail to load at all in some cases, but these are usually programs with thier own software fastloaders built in(ie: GEOS)), as it is with the Epyx Fastload and the FC series, though I seem to recall a few more compatibility issues.

I think the only 'mainstream' fastloader I have never really had a chance to use were the WarpSpeed ones.

one of the real advantages of JiffyDos being that is it still commercially available and you can just order it.... (tho i gather a few guys have done 'clones' of some of the fastload carts)

here is a bit of a comparison between various fastloaders for the C64:

http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Comparison_of_fast_loaders

and a list of (some of) the various fastloaders:

http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Fast_loader

 
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I agree that JiffyDOS is great and it's primarily what I use.

what a lot of people forget is the speed load carts only speed up the 1st program loaded,
I know for a fact that the FCIII does not have this limitation. You can always tell when the speed load routines are running on the FCIII as it blanks the screen during loading. (y)

Heather

quite possible but if the program calls basic or kernal routines it wont which would be most games. i've only tried action replay and expert cart both gave me a 1 file prg with a disk software boot loader, original games always loaded at nornal speed even if action reply etc was activated, never tried to load a original game with FCIII, ill have to try it.

Jiffy+15413,702,549,842,205,301,141,261,254,20
FC3+1541?5,409,341,001,001,001,001,001,00
 
When using a 1542 Ultimate II a JiffyDOS doesn't have any advantages anymore, right?
You won't need physical JiffyDOS chips anymore, no. The 1541U2 can replace the kernal if you have the rom files. However, this doesn't work on the latest 3.0 beta builds, you'll need to revert to 2.6 for the kernal replacement to work.
 
When using a 1542 Ultimate II a JiffyDOS doesn't have any advantages anymore, right?
And if you choose 'run program' from the menu, the program is written directly into memory so the loading time is reduced to almost nothing (only for first program, subsequent loads could still benefit from JiffyDOS which, as comraider writes, can be emulated by the 1541U-II cart directly).
 
I got the EPXY cart the other day and it works a dream. Definitely enough for me.

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If youre still interested i have plenty of FInal cardridges 3 for sale, there were made in the netherlands. PM me
 
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