[net.micro.mac] Horror Story

sam@ccitv3.UUCP (02/11/86)

This one is pretty good. First I want to applaud the people and 
General Computer Co. in Cambridge for providing the rest of us with
the most incredible product since toasters. The Hyperdrive has added
greatly to my enjoyment and productivity with the mac. I love it.

Now for the good news.  Yesterday, I brought my 512k/hyper20 mac into work.
My group needed some training on the mac in preparation for a class in 
project management/MacProject. "Training" here refers to the Macintosh
Guided Tour disk. After arriving, I made sure my hyper was still ok which
it was. Then the training began. First student went fine. When he was done
however, Mac would not boot from the hyper anymore. I got a hyper system disk
from a buddy, but to no avail.  "PLEASE FORMAT ME" was all it could come up
with. 16.5meg down the toilet. Not bad though; just reload from backup. Only
problem was that I have not been able to make backups for awhile. Why? Good
question. Whenever backups were attempted after the 4th disk, the cursor would
lock up necessitating re-boot. Gone. Everything just zapped in the blink of an
eye.

That's when I called GCC. I should not have sworn at the poor lady. It was 
at the situation, not the person. Anyway, she said she would get back to me
[when h*ll frezzes over]. (That last was mine, not hers.) I called again later aand a nice gentleman knew right away what was going on.

1.  Hyperdrives have known problems when used with the guided tour disks. (Ha. 
Now he tells me.) 

2.  The backup utility suffers from out-of-memory glitches. (Cursor locking
up means out of memory.) Gosh, why didn't I think of that.  Some hints GCC had
for us backup users were: never run a backup that will need more than 10 or so
disks; try to limit the numbers of drawers used at once. He had a couple of 
others that escape me at the moment, but most were just common sense stuff
similar to the same thing in MacWrite and/or Jazz.

Thanx for letting me praise and flame at the same time.

"May the bird of paradise avoid the hood of your car"

Sam Mantel -- Roch, NY