bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) (08/30/88)
A while ago, I posted a message describing how my El Cheapo XT clone
was taking longer and longer to boot up at power-on. I'd already
tried obvious things like making sure all electrical contacts were
good and solid.
Saturday it stopped booting at all. I finally gave in and took it to
the store where I bought it (Fry's in Sunnyvale, CA, for those of you
who are in this area), since it was still under the one-year
manufacturer's warranty.
I was sure that would be the last I'd see of it for months, that it
would be shipped back to Taiwan to be serviced by the manufacturer.
Much to my surprise, the technician opened it right up and asked a few
pertinent questions about the machine's behavior. Then she started
swapping plug-in boards. She swapped the monographics (Hercules clone)
adaptor twice before finding one that worked.
Lo and behold, El Cheapo booted right up. The monographics
display/printer card was the culprit.
Fry's has a satisfied customer here.
Hope this helps some of the others who responded to my posting
indicating they had similar problems.
--
Bob Weissman
Internet: bob@acornrc.uucp
UUCP: ...!{ ames | decwrl | oliveb | pyramid }!acornrc!bob
Arpanet: bob%acornrc.uucp@ames.arc.nasa.govjim@belltec.UUCP (Mr. Jim's Own Logon) (08/30/88)
In article <1001@acornrc.UUCP>, bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes: > A while ago, I posted a message describing how my El Cheapo XT clone > was taking longer and longer to boot up at power-on....... > > Saturday it stopped booting at all. I finally gave in and took it to > the store where I bought it..... > > Much to my surprise, the technician opened it right up and asked a few > pertinent questions about the machine's behavior. Then she started > swapping plug-in boards. She swapped the monographics (Hercules clone) > adaptor twice before finding one that worked. > > Lo and behold, El Cheapo booted right up. The monographics > display/printer card was the culprit. > > Fry's has a satisfied customer here. > > -- > Bob Weissman Sounds like good technical debugging. Takes out the display card (almost certainly a good board in another machine), plugs in a known good board and it fails, plugs in another known good board and it fails, finally plugs in a third known good board and it works. This time. A week from now, who knows. When it gets cold in 6 months, maybe it won't work again. As the parts age, maybe it will work better, but you know better than that. If there is a broken board, that's one thing. But when you have to match a certain set of boards to bet it to work, you haven't solved anything. You have just postponed the problem, probably unitl a week after your waranty has expired. A good technician should have tested further, or at the very least tested the original display card in another machine to see if it was truely bad. -Jim "Technicians don't get ulcers" Wall