I've never really known much about tape loaders on the Atari and am wondering a few things.
1) Has anyone ever produced one which will play sound so that it sounds like a ZX Spectrum whilst loading? (I love the Spectrum loads!)
2) What do they typically do? Are decompression routines routinely added to them? Do they typically amend I/O parameters to save tape length? Of course I've seen pictures, which are rather rare on the Atari (I guess due to annoying the user because of the already long load times)
3) Are there any standard open source / freeware / PD loaders for the Atari?
I've also seen the ones which just blank out the screen or add "Load Error" messages.
If you have any other information about them, please let me know.