aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt) (12/27/89)
Has anyone had any problems with Quattro Pro... such as it completely not
working?
We bought it for my father-in-law, installed it, and after no longer than
five minutes it hangs (90% of the time) or crashes (with stack trace
or other nasty stack overrun-like messages). You can do the most harmless
things... just lean on an arrow key and it will hang after a short while.
It hung once while quitting the program. Etc. (And this isn't UBD, trust
me, I should think I know what I'm doing by now.)
This is on a clone system that has no problems with anything else weird
we've thrown at it. It has a 10 Mhz DTK 286 motherboard, 640k, DTK bios,
and a CGA card ("premio", a clone like the rest). Excel (hence windows)
runs on it fine, old quattro is fine, multitudes of games have no
problems, it swallows applications I've written that hog memory, bang
the graphics, and thrash the disk, so the CGA card and BIOS seem quite
compatible. (I also ran diags on the memory, video, and disk, which are
all in great shape, as I suspected.)
Borland says they "extensively tested it on every configuration", and
"you're the first to report a problem like that", but, ahem, this looks
like programmer error to me. (I wasn't really impressed by Borland's
tech support, I might add. Having never tried it before I was stunned
to have to wait 20 minutes on hold before getting a human (at my expense
-- no toll free support #, despite claims of "free tech support"); then
asked moronic questions like what brand was the monitor (and no
questions about the video card, mind you!); then being told "I guess
it doesn't work on your system". They didn't even seem to know how to
handle giving me an RMA number -- that took three phone calls, each
person misdirecting me. But enough about that fiasco.)
So anyway, has anyone else with CGA and/or a DTK motherboard with DTK bios
tried this thing? It's pretty apparent if it fails.
--
Andrew Burt uunet!isis!aburt
or aburt@du.edu
"And that, my lord, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped"ted@helios.ucsc.edu (Ted Cantrall) (12/28/89)
Can anyone tell me the "street price" of Quattro Pro? And where to get it? -ted- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ted@helios.ucsc.edu | "The opinions are mine... (408)459-2110 | ...the facts are public domain." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
bradb@cs.toronto.edu (Brad Brown) (12/30/89)
aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt) writes: >Has anyone had any problems with Quattro Pro... such as it completely not >working? >We bought it for my father-in-law, installed it, and after no longer than >five minutes it hangs (90% of the time) or crashes (with stack trace >or other nasty stack overrun-like messages). You can do the most harmless >things... just lean on an arrow key and it will hang after a short while. >It hung once while quitting the program. Etc. (And this isn't UBD, trust >me, I should think I know what I'm doing by now.) Are you using DOS 3.3? I don't have Quatro Pro yet, but I have Reflex 2.0, which also uses the VROOM (VROOOM?) memory management scheme. I found that if I didn't add "stacks=0,0" to my CONFIG.SYS file, Reflex would crash while translating an old database to the new format. It probably would have crashed in other places too -- I never tried. The worst thing is this seems to be guru knowledge -- it's not listed anywhere in the Borland manuals, and I only tried it on a hunch. I don't know whether this will work for you -- my machine is a kludge of different parts I've collected over the years, so it could be just me... (-: Brad Brown :-) bradb@ai.utoronto.ca
rob@disk.UUCP (Rob Miracle) (01/01/90)
In article <89Dec29.120622est.2641@neat.cs.toronto.edu>, bradb@cs.toronto.edu (Brad Brown) writes: > aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt) writes: > > >Has anyone had any problems with Quattro Pro... such as it completely not > >working? > > Are you using DOS 3.3? I don't have Quatro Pro yet, but I have Reflex 2.0, > which also uses the VROOM (VROOOM?) memory management scheme. I found that > if I didn't add "stacks=0,0" to my CONFIG.SYS file, Reflex would crash while > translating an old database to the new format. It probably would have crashed > in other places too -- I never tried. I have ran Q-Pro on three different machines: IBM-PS/2 Model 30 / DOS 3.3 Clone 386/VGA / DOS 3.3 Zenith 286 (Big Box)/VGA / Zenith DOS 3.3+ I have yet to see it lock up any where. Here is the config.sys from my 386: BREAK=ON FILES=30 BUFFERS=20 DEVICE=C:\UTILITY\NNANSI.SYS DEVICE=C:\DOS\VDISK.SYS 3072 512 128 /E DEVICE=C:\TC\TDH386.SYS SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM /P /E:1024 I think that I have a STACKS command in the config.sys of the model 30 and I am unsure about the Zenith. Also the NNANSI.SYS was not in my config when I was testing Q-Pro on the 386. The only problem that I have encountered with it is that on my Clone VGA (Excelogic VGA/16 Adapter) is that the cursor in Graphics Mode tends to get left all over the place. But then again.... It worked fine on the Zenith VGA. Rob -- * Rob Miracle * ...uunet!ukma!corpane!disk!rob * * Disk Inc. (502)968-5401 - 5406 * Discaimer: I don't claim any of my actions * "Baseball is an activity, Football is a Sport." -- George Carlin
aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt) (01/07/90)
I wrote: >>>Has anyone had any problems with Quattro Pro... such as it completely not >>>working? Still not working. Nobody out there has a CGA + DTK AT motherboard + Qpro? Amazing. In article <89Dec29.120622est.2641@neat.cs.toronto.edu>, bradb@cs.toronto.edu (Brad Brown) writes: >> Are you using DOS 3.3? Yes. >> if I didn't add "stacks=0,0" to my CONFIG.SYS file... When I read your article, I gave it a shot. No different. In article <985@disk.UUCP> rob@disk.UUCP (Rob Miracle) writes: >I have ran Q-Pro on three different machines: > IBM-PS/2 Model 30 / DOS 3.3 > Clone 386/VGA / DOS 3.3 > Zenith 286 (Big Box)/VGA / Zenith DOS 3.3+ Hmm. What bios is the clone 386? We tried the program on a couple of other systems to see if it would work, and of course it does. So there's something about the CGA or motherboard (esp bios). However, the CGA and bios are compatible with everything else I've seen. I'd just like to figure out if the bios is the problem or the cga card. (I supect the PROGRAM is the problem, but that's something else again.) >The only problem that I have encountered with it is that on my Clone VGA >(Excelogic VGA/16 Adapter) is that the cursor in Graphics Mode tends to get >left all over the place. But then again.... It worked fine on the Zenith VGA. Aha! Confirmed video problems. Makes me wonder what strange things they're trying to do with video. I noticed the mouse-left-behind a couple times (before it would hang that is). Well, at least it does act up on someone else's system. So anyone got a cga+dtk who's tried it? -- Andrew Burt uunet!isis!aburt or aburt@du.edu "And that, my lord, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped"
porterd@cssexb.csus.edu (darren porter) (03/16/90)
Anybody who switched from 123 or Excel to Quattro Pro who would like to share they're reasons with me will be greatly appreciated. (Anybody anti-QP is welcome to express themselves, too.) I can get QP for $69, Excel & 123 for about $120 - $150 at my campus computer store. I heard QP is great and like the idea of saving up to $80! Darren Porter - California State University, Sacramento Internet -> porterd@cssexb.csus.edu UUCP -> ucdavis!csusac!telco1!dporter