power@tharr.UUCP (Power Computing Ltd) (09/08/90)
We finally have access to the net. Questions, flames, requests welcome by email or news. -- Power Computing Ltd. ..!ukc!axion!tharr!power "You must remember me... I bought a disk drive from you last month."
aimd@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Davidson) (09/13/90)
In article <960@tharr.UUCP> power@tharr.UUCP (Power Computing Ltd) writes: >We finally have access to the net. Questions, flames, requests welcome >by email or news. > >"You must remember me... I bought a disk drive from you last month." I bought I disk drive from you - I'll never forget you. You advertise your Power Series 900 disk drives as STE compatible. They aren't. Of course, most hard disk drives have had read/write problems with chips fitted in some STEs. This isn't your fault and has now been fixed by Atari. What I'm talking about is the fact that rebooting my STe with your drive attached causes a bus error which can only be cleared by a further reboot. Having to hover over the reset switch in order to reboot twice is not what I describe as compatibility. I have called your 'Technical Support Line' (har har!) many times since I bought my STe and listened to many versions of 'the problem's being fixed' or 'we don't know what it is, and either do the manufacturers, GE-SOFT'. The favourite expression is 'it seems to be a feature of the board'. In fact, copying Atari's AHDI.PRG onto my floppy boot disk in place of GE-SOFT's P_HDI.PRG fixes the problem, quickly, simply and without recourse to reformatting the whole drive. No need to spend four months looking at two bombs every time I reboot either. This operation is so simple that I might have been tempted to try it earlier had I not been assured many times that 'it was a feature of the board' and 'it might need a new chip - we're working on it'. On a slightly different note, I was told by you on Monday that sending my STE to my dealer for a new chip set would solve the problem. As proof that this was the correct thing to do I was told you were sending all the STEs you'd sold back to your distributors for repair. You even gave me their number. I was told by them (SDL?) that they weren't fixing any STEs because Atari had told them that all machines should be sent from the user directly to them. In fact, Atari told me that too. In fact, when I phoned you later that day querying what I'd been told, I was informed that the guy I had spoken to didn't know about the drive rebooting problem at all. Wouldn't it have been hilarious if I'd sent my STE away, got it back weeks later and *still* had to reboot twice! All I can say is that if ignorance is bliss, you lot must be swimming in it. Perhaps you should stick to selling blank disks. Lots of luv, Mark. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ||| Mark Davidson: BSc Computer Science & Art. Intelligence ||| University of Edinburgh / | \ Email address: aimd%castle.ed.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk