[Coco] Copying a data/binary file from disk to cassette

[Darren A.]

>> 
>> Actually, I believe tape and disk are identical in this regard:  both permit the
>> (c)loadm'ing of files with multiple origins, but not the (c)savem'ing of
>> them.  As I recall, this capability of cloadm was not in Color Basic but was
>> added with Extended Basic.  (What would be the point of tape Edtasm allowing the
>> creation of multi-segment binaries if Basic couldn't load them with cloadm?)
>> 
>> Art
>> 
> ---
> 
> That's correct. The CLOADM command in a Color Basic only machine can only load a single, contiguous segment. Extended Basic re-implements the CLOADM command to add the same multi-segment capability found in Disk Basic's LOADM. The DLOADM command also supports multiple segments.
> 

---

There is another difference between a single-segment binary tape file and a muti-segment tape file. Multi-segment files use the Gap Mode (like data files or ASCII Basic programs) which places 0.5 seconds of silence and 128 bytes of sync ($55) between each 255 byte (or less) data block. It also momentarily stops the motor between each data block read. This significantly increases the amount of time it takes to load the file.

The tape version of Frogger (by Sega) uses this format (perhaps it was created with EDTASM). It appears to use multiple segments so that it can display an instructions screen while loading the program code and an auto-start segment. It is by far the slowest loading game that I have encountered.

Darren


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