Putting Up with Load Times

[Great Hierophant]

With cartridges on old computers, there need not be any waiting for a game to load. With cassette tapes, there is often a long load, but usually just one load. With floppy diskettes, there can be long loads and shorter, but still long loads. Role playing and graphical adventure games in particular often have long load times. Even the shorter loads can add up to a significant amount of time.

 

In 16-bit IBM/Atari/Apple/Commodore computers, a lot of software can be installed to a hard drive and the issues of load times can be alleviated. But 8-bit machines didn't support hard drives well for the most part and games written for them are almost always copy protected. How do you deal with those long loading times?

[Keatah]

Burn it to cart. Or get a cracked copy and do it on the HDD. I remember loading Defender and Robotron just about instantly off of my Sider 10Meg on the Apple II. I swear it was nearly ramdisk speed! At least it seemed that way to gradeschool aged kid. Shit, man, I thought I had a nasa supercomputer going!

 

Why not look for a modern-day equivalent of a disk emulator. Something that feeds the data to the system 10x faster than usual. Something like a harmony cart or a CFFA 3000..

[Seob]

Just make yourself a nice cup of coffee while waiting for game to load. Thats how i do it.

[SoulBlazer]

Doesn't the C64 count as a 8 bit machine? They DID make Hard Drives for it (called Hard Disks in those days). They were expensive BITD and probably not many made, but they are out there.

 

And this is another reason why I prefer playing in Emulation....super boot up the games.

[RobertB]

Doesn't the C64 count as a 8 bit machine? They DID make Hard Drives for it...

The CMD hard drives for the Commodore 8-bits (which had the serial bus) were the most popular. Then there were the other manufacturers which made the Lt. Kernal hard drive and others. You could even interface CBM hard drives (the big monsters -- 9060 and 9090).

 

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://videocam.net.au/fcug

Edited September 2, 2013 by RobertB

[Oldbitcollector]

Most certainly the C64 qualifies as an 8bit machine..

 

Life is too fast these days.. A little load-time waiting is good for the soul...

 

Jeff

[high voltage]

I once copied Pool of Radiance from all 5 C64 discs to one 3 /1/2 disc for use on my 1581, this actually increased the loading times manifold.

[Mirage]

There's a lot of modern solutions to this problem on 8-bit machines (and 16-bit machines for that matter). There's a lot of info out there on each of them, but for the C64, a 1541-Ultimate-II with JiffyDOS, or a Jim Brain uIEC with JiffyDOS (you'd have to mostly use this one with only cracked or non-copy protected games though), will be about the best you can do for C64 aside from carts or making cart images. You'll still have a load time, but very significantly shorter than a stock C64 with 1541.

 

So, there are solutions to this, but you'll have to spend a little money. Or, go emulation, which is fine with some people (I'm fine with it for some systems, not others).

[slab0meat]

Epyx Fast Load Cartridge!

 

[carlsson]

Of course you could install JiffyDOS in a 1541 too, or use one of the fastloader cartridges. However programs that use their own custom loader usually won't benefit from fastloaders. As for hard drives, I suppose it was just as difficult to install games to hard drive as to make a floppy disk copy, i.e. games with built in protection that would fail to load on a copied disk.

 

For that matter, I was just reminded that today you download modern games from the Internet and have to wait quite a while to have them install, Steam updates etc. That might mostly be a one-time process, but usually it is the first time you play a game that you are most eager about it and thus 30 years later still have sit and wait for 30 minutes or several hours to get all the updates in place before gaming can commence.

[Dripfree]

Back when I got my first computer an apple IIGS I used to get up in the morning and start loading world games. I'd go upstairs and get myself a bowl of cereal and some milk. Then Id head back downstairs and I was good to go. I do the same thing now but instead of cereal it's a cup of coffee, maybe mix a bloody marry, or just grab a beer. I've never really had a problem with load times.