zqloader

[berarma]

This looks like a worthy successor of OTLA. It can use compression, it's maintained and works on Windows and Linux.

I haven't tried it yet but I thought it deserved a mention.

https://github.com/oxidaan/zqloader

[jamesh]

I tried it. Well, I can say I am actually using it from time to time. It's a nice project with a lot of potential. But be aware -- at the moment it's rough around the edges. 48k games with straightforward loader MAY work, the rest definitely won't.

Oh, and it's nice to see the project moving forward after a pause. IMHO, if we can help author implementing fully manual mode (as opposed to the fully automatic analysis implemented right now), that will improve it's value. What I meant to say: instead of "just" feeding it a TAP and hoping it can figure out how to load and start everything, feed it with a TAP and configuration. Something like "CLEAR XYX, USR ABC, load blocks m, n, o, p from the TAP".

[SkoolKid]

What I meant to say: instead of "just" feeding it a TAP and hoping it can figure out how to load and start everything...

I haven't used this tool, but from the documentation it looks as if you can feed it Z80 snapshots as well. Presumably its success rate is much better with snapshots than with TAP/TZX files?

[jamesh]

I haven't used this tool, but from the documentation it looks as if you can feed it Z80 snapshots as well. Presumably its success rate is much better with snapshots than with TAP/TZX files?

Yes, indeed, it works with (some) Z80 files and while I am not using snapshots a lot, it did work for me. It overwrites the lower 1/3 of the screen with the loader code. And some large Z80 files (made with tap2sna.py ) do not work. And some snapshots got corrupted. But it is more reliable compared to a random BASIC loader.

[jamesh]

I played with zqloader a little bit (alright, for a (long) while) yesterday, and I must admit -- it's the perfect match. tap2snp + t2s files and the zqloader. Snapshots that did not work for me before appear to be 128k snapshots, so they are not supported yet. Otherwise, zqloader is capable of pushing z80 to Speccy in about 30 seconds And tap2sna.py makes it easy to create z80 with a proper loading screen!

P.S. some snapshots get corrupted after transfer (like pyjamarama, which works fine with FUSE or when copied to an SD card and launched via esxdos) and loading of real 48k is tricky because speed is high, but overall I highly recommend zqloader v1.1 together with tap2sna and t2s files.