jpdres13@usl-pc.usl.edu (Joubert John V) (02/18/89)
----------------- I have a Gateway 2000 386 machine that I bought around X-mas time. Right now, I am very pleased. I had some problems with the first machine that I received. 1) Within 4 hours of getting the machine, I suddenly had a yellow spot on the screen instead of a full screen. The mono (amber) monitor apparently bit the big one. I tried fooling with the video card to see if it worked itself loose during shipping. Nope. Put it back together and turned on the monitor, nope , not even a yellow dot, just a power light on monitor. I then wanted to see if the Samsung monitor had blown a fuse, I removed two screws from the bottom , and could find no others. At this point I realized that I needed some kind of case cracker (a la Macintosh) to open the monitor. So then I just put the thing back together, and praying for divine intervention ( :-) ), I plugged the thing in just one more time. Now the power light did not come on! At this point I realized I am never gonna get this monitor to live. I became interested to see if the computer still ran, I managed to redirect a "dir" to my printer port. So I knew the computer ran. 2) During the 4 hours I had been able to use the computer, I had drive problems, If I was fooling around on a floppy drive , changing dir's or getting dir's, the computer would lock up. 3) Printer port would not initialize via "mode lpt1:80,6" statement, every time, and I was sporadically able to use the printer port. I checked the printer card to make sure that the setting was on lpt1:, it was. 4) Once while using xcopy to move some data from drive D: to C: in a subdir, the subdir did not appear on C: ! So I mkdir'd the dir and went into it. There were my files, but in a scrambled looking form. Chkdsk told me I had a gazillion lost clusters all over the place. At this point, I was eyeing my shotgun, and was musing about how quickly I could put that machine to an early merciful death. I called tech support, and I told my problems, I got a new printer card, new controller card, and a new monitor. I was pretty dissatisfied with ugly yellow amber and asked him if he would give me credit on the old broken monitor and video card ,and fix me up with paper white vga and a Video Seven Fastwrite VGA. He said yes, and sent me an Imtec Paper white VGA, and the requested card. Put all the stuff in the computer when it arrived, and the monitor worked fine. Still had Hard drive problems, and the printer problem was worse, I could not use my printer at all! The computer still crashed periodically when accessing floppies. I then decided to take advantage of the thirty day return policy guarantee and get my money back. I was put in touch with the head of tech support. I told him that part swapping was not going to cure my machine, and that I thought I got a big yellow lemon. After hearing about all the problems, he promptly agreed that I had indeed received a rare lemon. He told me that he knew that his company made excellent machines, and that he was sure that that his company could provide me with a good machine.I was told that I could send the machine back (my postage expense) and get my refund or he could send me a new one. I told him that if I got a whole new machine with his company, I would want a new sales receipt, and a new 30 day trial period, I also wanted him to pay the postage. I was put in touch with the head of the sales dept. to make out a new order, and figure the logistics of a swap. The sales dept. head offered me a new 80 meg hard drive instead of my 40 meg for free! I said that was real nice, but what I really needed was a color vga monitor, and he said OK! He gave the monitor for FREE (gave him back paper white ), new machine, new sales receipt, and new 30 day trial period! I have the new machine and love it, and am extremely pleased with the way that Gateway has handled my account. They were very willing to give me a refund for my money, or make me happy with a new computer. I have suggest two things to watch for: 1) I have bought a Logitech Hi-Rez bus mouse, and have had to send it in (under warranty) to have some chips changed to make it work with my computer because "some motherboards make it do that (Logitech service dept.)" What it does is make the cursor go crazy, making the mouse non-usable. I have not gotten it back yet, so I don't have anything else to report on that. 2) VGA card -- the default vga card that they ship with their 386 computers is a 16-bit Tatung VGA card. This a Korean card that has Video Seven chips on it. This is probably the junkiest video card for compatibility in the world. The vertical retrace end register should make the bios call with the value AE being passed in & out of the video card to be IBM compatible, this video card, for some brain damaged reason, chooses to send the combination value 8E in & out of this call. On the other hand, having the Video Seven VGA Fastwrite card in the computer prevents the reset button on the front panel of the computer from working (This is why they put the Tatung because it has Vega chips, but lets the reset button work, I don't think that they yet know what a piece of sh*t Tatung is.) This does not bother me however, because the ctrl-alt-del still works, and ST-251-1 and ST-4096 hard drives that Gateway uses auto park the heads when you power down for a cold boot. The result: I am pleased, very pleased and happy with my computer, my 386/20 mhz cost me $3000 from Gateway and I have a hard time finding a better deal. The newest price list for a 20 mhz is $2999 for an EGA card, EGA monitor, 1meg memory (8meg default internal expandable, 12 meg optional if you get another from the mother board manufacturer , Hawk computers' Gene II, Gateway can give you the address. ), 1to1 interleave drive controller, and 80 meg ST-4096. There is a faster 25 Mhz combination for $3999, but I don't know what it is. My boss just bought an 8088, 10mhz, 640K, 40 meg hd, EGA system for $2200, and another friend just bought a PS/2 model 30 8086, 10 mhz, one or more wait states, 20 meg very slow (80 msec) hard drive, CGA monitor for $2500. Somehow I feel that I did pretty well, no doubt that there may be better deals out there, but I looked hard, and I did not find it. Excuse my long article, but since a few people out there have been asking about this computer, I thought that they should know. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Joubert | /\ | /\ | _ jpdres13@usl-pc.USL or ... | \|<>|>|> \|<>|>|><`|`| ut-sally!usl!usl-pc!jpdres13 |-----/|-------/|---------------------- GEnie: J.JOUBERT | \/ \/ -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
usenet@cps3xx.UUCP (Usenet file owner) (02/21/89)
Keywords I justt ordered the 16 MHz 286 machine from Gateway and am anxiously awaiting its arival. I have read much aboutt this in the net. If anyone cares I will let you all know my feelings abou tthe machine. greg