DLOAD filename [FROM offset] [TO address] [SIZE size]
The DLOAD
command load data from a mass storage (normally, a floppy disk) into
the computer's memory. This data can be programs, numeric data, text, or any
other information that has previously been saved to disk.
The DLOAD
command was primarily used to load numeric data, text, or
images for use within a program. Some games allowed you to save the current
state of the game to a disk using DLOAD
so you could resume playing
at a later time.
The syntax allows
you to load a specific file (filename
) starting from a specific offset
within the file, towards a specific address
in memory for a certain
number of bytes
. Note that the behavior of this instruction strictly
depends on the target where it is executed. It follows that not all options
are necessarily available on every target.
The time it takes to load a file depended on the speed of the drive and the size of the file. Files loaded had to be in the correct format for the computer and the program using them. The amount of data that could be loaded was limited by the available RAM.
On the atari
and atarixl
target, it is not possible to omit
the number of bytes and the starting address.
On the c64
and c128
target, you cannot indicate
the offset and the size.
DLOAD "test" TO finalAddress SIZE 16
Dl
If you have encountered a problem using this command, if you think there is a bug or the explanation is unclear, please open an issue for this keyword on GitHub. Thank you!