LOAD "*",8,1

[klicker]

I am following the loading and saving tutorial and I see you have there the following BASIC command to load a program:

LOAD "MYPROGRAM",8

I remember from my Commodore 64 BASIC days that I would always type in

LOAD "*",8,1

to load a program, though I never knew what it meant at the time. Can you please explain the difference between the 2 commands?

[chronodev]

I am following the loading and saving tutorial and I see you have there the following BASIC command to load a program:

LOAD "MYPROGRAM",8

I remember from my Commodore 64 BASIC days that I would always type in

LOAD "*",8,1

to load a program, though I never knew what it meant at the time. Can you please explain the difference between the 2 commands?

Ah, LOAD "*",8,1

I used to type that a lot (and still do). Anybody who grew up on a Commodore 64 could probably type this up with their eyes closed

Anyway I am going to get to it in detail in more advanced modules. In a nutshell, the asterix "*" refers to the first program on a disk. Most disks had 1 game and you could just type in LOAD "*",8,1 without having to remember how to spell the name or anything. If, however, the disk had more than 1 game, sometimes you would type in LOAD "$",8,1 to see the directory, and then you would load the game you wanted.

LOAD "*",8,1 would if so load the game into memory, and would also in most occasions (especially commercial games) would execute the program automatically without you having to type RUN. LOAD "*",8 (without the comma one afterwards) would not execute the program automatically (some games would not work at all if you issued the load command without the comma one)

The difference between the writing the command with or without the ,1 is the position the game gets loaded into memory. This is an advanced topic that will be covered in a later module, so don't worry about it now if the above explanation made no sense to you

Just understand for now that LOAD "*",8,1 loads the first program on Disk and (sometimes) executes it. For the programs you are currently writing, use LOAD "*",8 (if it happens to be the first program on the disk) or LOAD "MYPROGRAM",8 (replace MYPROGRAM with the name of your program)

[wheelbarrow]

Ah, LOAD "*",8,1

I used to type that a lot (and still do). Anybody who grew up on a Commodore 64 could probably type this up with their eyes closed

Anyway I am going to get to it in detail in more advanced modules. In a nutshell, the asterix "*" refers to the first program on a disk. Most disks had 1 game and you could just type in LOAD "*",8,1 without having to remember how to spell the name or anything. If, however, the disk had more than 1 game, sometimes you would type in LOAD "$",8,1 to see the directory, and then you would load the game you wanted.

LOAD "*",8,1 would if so load the game into memory, and would also in most occasions (especially commercial games) would execute the program automatically without you having to type RUN. LOAD "*",8 (without the comma one afterwards) would not execute the program automatically (some games would not work at all if you issued the load command without the comma one)

The difference between the writing the command with or without the ,1 is the position the game gets loaded into memory. This is an advanced topic that will be covered in a later module, so don't worry about it now if the above explanation made no sense to you

Just understand for now that LOAD "*",8,1 loads the first program on Disk and (sometimes) executes it. For the programs you are currently writing, use LOAD "*",8 (if it happens to be the first program on the disk) or LOAD "MYPROGRAM",8 (replace MYPROGRAM with the name of your program)

Wanted to add to what Chronodev said. You can also use LOAD "*",8,1 to load the last program you loaded. So for example if you do a LOAD "MYPRGORAM",8,1 and then let's say you clear the memory with NEW and then you type in LOAD "*",8,1 it will load MYPROGRAM even if it is not the first program on disk since that was the last program you loaded.

[chronodev]

Wanted to add to what Chronodev said. You can also use LOAD "*",8,1 to load the last program you loaded. So for example if you do a LOAD "MYPRGORAM",8,1 and then let's say you clear the memory with NEW and then you type in LOAD "*",8,1 it will load MYPROGRAM even if it is not the first program on disk since that was the last program you loaded.

That's correct, and if you want to force loading of the first program on disk AFTER you've already loaded something else, you prepend a colon before the asterix, like this:

LOAD ":*",8,1

[Macca_96]

You can also use LOAD "S*",8,1. This will load the first program that starts with the letter S or any other letter you use