Jim Brain's uIEC SD C64 adapter help needed

[save2600]

Okay, just picked one of these babies up at the Emergency Commodore show in Lombard, IL the other week. Hooked it up to a couple of different C64's and used a couple of different SD cards. I keep getting the error of "?device not ready", or something like that. Being PeeCee free over here, I have tried formatting in both MacOS FAT (32 I believe) and my digital camera which might be FAT16. Nothing seems to work. Not being a C64 whiz by any stretch, would someone please verify that I'm trying to access this thing correctly? I've tried all these commands to no avail:

load "$",8
load "$",8,1
load "*",8

[save2600]

Well I'll be.... that did the trick! Thanks ZeBeeDee!

Now, is there a special trick in dealing w/ some of these pesky long filenames or do you simply move the cursor around and edit that way?

Also - is it normal for it to take "forever" for these tiny programs to load off the uIEC card? I'm used to using an Atari 8-bit and the disk access speed (even with SIO2OSX) is quite fast.

[save2600]

Thanks for the tip on JiffyDos Jim. I've heard it talked about, but didn't know it was a fastloader type of thing. I want to love the C64 experience again, but damn... you can fix yourself a sandwich in the time it takes for a game to load  :-)

And yeah, the file naming seems tricky, but doesn't matter if you place the cursor, type load, delete the .prg denomination at the end, etc. On certain titles, if I modify a files name on my Mac and then pop it in the C64, I notice strange characters in place of where letters should be.

[save2600]

1-1/2 minutes to load Ikari Warriors from this thing. So that's how slow a 1541 is? I don't remember it taking so long back in the 80's. Hmm... are we *that* much more less patient today? lol  In any event, like mr_a500 mentions, the Atari 8-bit adapter is lighting fast comparatively.  

I haven't sought out JiffyDos yet. Is it readily available as a download somewhere? I have a sneaky hunch my C64 won't be getting much use without some kind of disk speedup utility.  :-(

Oh and yes, I'm using a brand new, freshly formatted SD card.

So nothing like the SIO2PC adapter exists for the C64? I read somewhere something about this other 1541 emulating device that's supposed to have more features than JB's product, but no little more than that. Guess I'm going to have to do some homework on this stuff soon. Not today though - it's 20th H.S. Reunion night! Can't wait to tell all my old classmates that I'm still monkeying around with classic computers and game systems.  lol

[save2600]

Both uIEC and jiffydos for your 64(or 128) is still cheap. JiffyDOS is a must IMHO.

Yes, have a JiffyDOS chip coming soon. In the meantime... could someone please tell me how to load and run a .crt or .d64 file from the card into the computer? I've tried some of the suggestions off some of the other sites, including the wiki one, but this info seems pretty elusive. And then I'm seeing there's .LNX, .TAP, .T64, .Z64, .D81, .G64 files out there too  :-(   lol!

[save2600]

Thank you Robert. I'm glad you pop in here once in a while :-)