ucoerp@swuts.swbt.com (Robert B. Paster) (05/25/90)
Well NETLANDERS, There has been a great deal of discussion on the various mail order places selling 386 computers. I have watched these messages for a couple of months and was leaning toward GATEWAY 2000 to order my 386sx computer. I was impressed with their prices, when compared to any of the other "known" mail order places and in general I had only seen good comments about them. I got a little bit leary when someone complained about delays in shipments, but I finally decided to "bite the bullet" and place an order. On April 27, 1990 I placed the order for a 386sx in the "standard" configuration (2Mb ram, 65Mb hd, 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 fd, 1024X768 VGA monitor and adapter). I was told that I could upgrade to a NEC 3D monitor for $100 more, so I went ahead and ordered the NEC to replace the Tatung that is standard. I was told that I should hear from a customer service representative in about a week and a half to provide the order number, customer id, and a tentative ship date, I was also told shipping is normally around two weeks from date of order, and shipping is by Federal Express two day air. On Thursday, May 3 I received a call from Denise at Gateway. She explained that she was my customer service representative and provided me with my order number, customer ID, and a tentative ship date of May 11. She also stated that they had been shipping a couple of days early and that I would be contacted when the machine actually shipped. On May 5 I received a letter with the above information in it. On Wednesday, May 9 I received a phone call that the machine had shipped and should arrive on Friday May 11. On Friday, May 11 at around 10:45 A. M. Federal Express arrived and delivered the computer and monitor. Later that day I set up the machine and it worked perfectly, right out of the box. The only thing of concern was the hard drive (Microscience 65Mb) was very noisy. Everything that was on the shipping list was included, except a spare battery pack. I called Gateway and spoke to Denise. I told her about the missing battery pack. She indicated that they were back ordered, but she would send me one when they came in, probably Wednesday of the next week, if I would call and remind her. I told her I would. I decided, before I got into anything too "heavy duty" I would read the documentation from Gateway on "setting up and using" the computer. The documentation was good, but left something to be desired as far as detail, like using the device drivers supplied with the machine (i.e. emm.sys (in config.sys file as supplied by Gateway), emm386.sys, ramdrv.sys, smartdrv.sys, and etc.). There was a readme file in the same directory as the emm.sys file, but it referred to a device driver named neatemm.sys which was not provided. The MS-DOS documentation was a condensed version, and included a mail-in card to order the full documentation, at a price of about $35.00. On Saturday, May 12 I was concerned because when the system went through the power on self test, it only checked 1Mb of ram instead of the 2Mb that were supposed to be in the machine. I opened up the computer and found that there was 2Mb of ram installed. I got brave and looked at the bios setup utilities that are provided. One is entered by pressing the "del" key while booting the system. The other is a program called "set386sx.com". Again nothing in the documentation gave any description of which to use or how to use them. While in the set386sx program, I proceeded to "screw" up the expanded memory setup and was not able to get the system to boot. I tried to call technical support, but was told that they were closed ( after 12:00 P. M.) and would not reopen until Monday. After several attempts at making changes to the bios setup, I was able to get the machine to run, showing 2Mb check at power on. The "mem" command showed 640Kb of regular memory, 1Mb of expanded ram, and 64Kb extended ram. However, I was not confident that everything was set as it should be, so I decided to call Technical Support on Monday. On Monday, May 14 at 6:40 P.M. I called Gateway and asked for Technical Support. The operator said all lines were busy, but I could wait. She said it would be about 40 minutes. I waited, what choice did I have. When the tech. rep. answered ( 35 minutes later), he was very helpful and understanding of my situation. Overall, with the exception of a long wait, I was very satisfied and got the information I needed. On Thursday, May 17, I called and spoke to Denise to remind her about the spare battery pack that I had not received as part of the original shipment. She indicated that she would have one shipped as soon as possible. I received the battery pack on the following Wednesday through regular U.S. Mail. So far, two weeks, the machine is running fine, with no further problems. -- Bob Paster One Bell Center UUCP - sw1e!ucoerp Room 12-A-02 Southwestern Bell Tel. Co. St. Louis, Missouri 314-235-2741 63101-3099
cohend@roadkill.rtp.dg.com (Dave Cohen) (05/31/90)
In article <1488@swuts.swbt.com>, ucoerp@swuts.swbt.com (Robert B. Paster) writes: > > Well NETLANDERS, > > There has been a great deal of discussion on the various mail order > places selling 386 computers. I have watched these messages for a > couple of months and was leaning toward GATEWAY 2000 to order my 386sx > computer. I was impressed with their prices, when compared to any I also recently bought a computer from Gateway 2000. I got the 20 Mghz 386 and had the same experiences as Bob in terms of phone calls and delivery. I have not had any problems - yeah, the DOS manual is condensed, but you probably should pick up a good book like MSDOS Encyclopedia anyway. The point is - Gateway does everything they say, and do it when they say they will. There will probably be some problems, as apparently they are growing by leaps and bounds. > -- > Bob Paster One Bell Center > UUCP - sw1e!ucoerp Room 12-A-02 > Southwestern Bell Tel. Co. St. Louis, Missouri > 314-235-2741 63101-3099 > David Cohen | "There's nothin' wrong with goin' cohend@dg-rtp.dg.com | nowhere, baby, but we should be {world}!mcnc!rti!dg-rtp!cohend | should be goin' nowhere fast." Data General Corporation, RTP, NC| - Streets of Fire