david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (09/02/88)
I recently told my mother to buy a Subsystem 500 for her machine and
recently (last saturday) had a chance to look it over closely.
The thing comes in a metal case that's made from two pieces of stamped & bent
sheet metal. The two halves fit together fairly well, but it takes a certain
amount of juggling to actually get them to fit together.
Inside is the board. The connection to the external connector is made
by mounting a little card on the main card, at a right angle, and putting
an edge-card connector on the end of that. Here is the first construction
problems. One is this fixed thing sitting there. In the A500 there
are two screw holes, one on each side of the card edge, which look like
one could screw down firmly whatever you attach at the card edge. They
do not do this. The other problem is that this little card sitting
up in the air is the ONLY thing keeping the A500 and the Subsystem
together. But in normal use of a computer one is always sliding the
keyboard around, resulting in the A500 and the Subsystem often getting
out of alignment. I am a little bit afraid that if left alone there
will be some sort of problem with static or whatever. I am intending
to have Mom put some velcro down, or something, to help keep the two
boxes 'together'.
The main board doesn't really have any components on it (that I remember)
and has two card edge connectors mounted on it. Very simple here and
doubtlessly hard to screw up. One good point is that they left another
edge card connector to pass the bus through.
Internally there is a space to mount a 3.5 inch drive, in which they have
mounted a floppy. The connection to the floppy is a ribbon cable arrangement
which enters through a hole in the back of the box. They do not have
anything to pass on the floppy connector.
There is a little bit of dead space in the box which *might* be big enough
for another floppy...
The power supply is a seperate unit which has connectors for +5v, -5v, +12v
and ground. The power cable provided only has two connectors on it and
there aren't any instructions saying which power supply spots to hook the
power cable to. In fact, my mother tells me that the documentation was
basically non-existant... Oh well.
In all, the product looks 'ok'. There are a couple of bugs, but they
are minor. It is perhaps fortunate that most of my family is technically
very literate and can handle little bugs like that in stride.
--
<---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy <david@ms.uky.edu>
<---- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<---- Problem: how to get people to call ...; Solution: Completely reconfigure
<---- your mail system then leave for a weeks vacation when 90% done.vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) (09/05/88)
In article <10204@s.ms.uky.edu>, david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes:
: The thing comes in a metal case that's made from two pieces of stamped & bent
: sheet metal. The two halves fit together fairly well, but it takes a certain
: amount of juggling to actually get them to fit together.
Very true. In fact attempting to install some of the screws resulted in metal
dust all over the place. But one doesnot nedd to put in all the screws
(I hope so)
: The other problem is that this little card sitting
: up in the air is the ONLY thing keeping the A500 and the Subsystem
: together. But in normal use of a computer one is always sliding the
: keyboard around, resulting in the A500 and the Subsystem often getting
: out of alignment. I am a little bit afraid that if left alone there
: will be some sort of problem with static or whatever. I am intending
: to have Mom put some velcro down, or something, to help keep the two
: boxes 'together'.
I solved (?!) the problem by not moving the keyboard. This is helped by the
fact that all the cables one can put on the amiga500 are there. It makes
moving the setup, intentionally or not, quite difficult.
: They do not have anything to pass on the floppy connector.
The cable is long enough to be attached to other drive systems, assuming
that they pass the floppy connection thru. But still a negative though.
: The power supply is a seperate unit which has connectors for +5v, -5v, +12v
: and ground. The power cable provided only has two connectors on it and
: there aren't any instructions saying which power supply spots to hook the
: power cable to. In fact, my mother tells me that the documentation was
: basically non-existant... Oh well.
:
I believe that there was one small sentence somewhere. But there is no
real documentation. Only an installation guide. But if you are willing
to pay, telephone support if good. I couldn't get the micron 2M board
to work. One needed to install a jumper. The guy at Pacific peripheral
was calmand helpful in spite of my screaming. I like that :-)vkr%osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) (09/06/88)
In message (869@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu) Vidhyanath K. Rao says: >: The power supply is a seperate unit which has connectors for +5v, -5v, +12v >: and ground. The power cable provided only has two connectors on it and >: there aren't any instructions saying which power supply spots to hook the >: power cable to. In fact, my mother tells me that the documentation was >: basically non-existant... Oh well. >: >I believe that there was one small sentence somewhere. But there is no >real documentation. Only an installation guide. But if you are willing >to pay, telephone support if good. I couldn't get the micron 2M board ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >to work. One needed to install a jumper. The guy at Pacific peripheral >was calmand helpful in spite of my screaming. I like that :-) I too have a subsystem 500 and have the Overdrive in slot 1 and the Micron 2M board in slot 2. I haven't had any problems with the Micron board, it works just fine. On the other hand, I have been having problems with my Overdrive. I have been getting read/write errors every so often with my Seagate 277N I am going to try the overheating solution by installing a fan. But then one day, after mounting my computer froze. The floppy light remained on, but there was no transferrance to the hard disk. The machine did not GURU either just kept the floppy drive light on and was froze until a warm-boot. I'm sending the overdrive and my hard disk to Pacific Peripherals for inspection. As a side note: I purchased my hard disk from Lyco computers and I did paid the 4% VISA charge plus $11.50 UPS blue label charge (total was $475) They told me it would be about 2 weeks before I would receive it because they do all their ordering directly with Seagate. I was very happy when I received the drive a little over a week later (about 10 days). Was I lucky or what?