mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Michael Thomas Niehaus) (09/13/89)
I'm sure someone will blast me for posting this, but I must say that I have
gained some respect for Seagate after reading this letter, quoted from
the September 12 issue of MacWEEK:
SEAGATE COMES THROUGH WHERE APPLE FAULTERS
My Apple 20SC hard drive failed eight months after purchase. The Apple
dealer could repair it for $400 (the price of a new third-party drive these
days). I learned, after some digging, that the Seagate drive inside my
Apple drive was under a one-year warranty by Seagate. After Apple indicated
that it was unwilling to honor the Seagate warranty, I returned the drive
assembly to Seagate, and it was replaced for $35. Happy ending.
The story continues, however. The Seagate representative I spoke with
expressed suprise that Apple was not willing to honor the one-year warranty
since her understanding was that Seagate and Apple have a "pass through" (to
the end user) agreement. She indicated that Seagate was more than willing
to deal directly with me, however, if Apple was unwilling. From all appear-
ances, Apple seems to be amking $365 profit on every Apple hard drive
replacement performed by an Apple dealer during that infamous "three-to-
twelve-month" window.
I have spoken with Apple's customer relations department, which says that
Apple has no such arrangement with Seagate and, in fact, indicated that the
drive would not work unless purchased directly from Apple. To add insult to
injury, the operator was rude, chastising me for not buying the extended
warranty. She could only offer to identify the nearest Apple dealer if I
would give her my ZIP code.
S. Urban
Medway, Mass.
--- End of Quoted Letter ---
-Michael
--
Michael Niehaus UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!mithomas
Apple Student Rep ARPA: mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu
Ball State University AppleLink: ST0374 (from UUCP: st0374@applelink.apple.com)ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) (09/16/89)
< I have spoken with Apple's customer relations department, which says that < Apple has no such arrangement with Seagate and, in fact, indicated that the < drive would not work unless purchased directly from Apple. To add insult to This will be true for some drives, if you are intending to use Apple's software. Apple gets the drive vendors to make ROM changes to the drives. For example, the Seagate ST157N drive Apple sells will claim in the inquiry data to be a Seagate ST157NB. Note that "B" there. HD Setup looks for this and knows when you have replaced your Apple drive with a non-Apple Seagate. So, if you sent a broken ST157NB to Seagate, and they had to replace the controller card, you would probably get an ST157N, which would not work. Apple has claimed somewhere that they make other firmware changes besides changing the inquiry data, but I am not sure that I believe them. I can't think of anything that needs to be changed in most current SCSI drives, and I've never seen any problems when I've used TMON to spoof Apple software into thinking that a non-Apple drive was an Apple drive. Does anyone know what other changes, if any, Apple has done to these disk drives? Tim Smith
d88-jwa@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) (09/17/89)
In article <22201@cup.portal.com> ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) writes: >Apple has claimed somewhere that they make other firmware changes besides >changing the inquiry data, but I am not sure that I believe them. I can't >Does anyone know what other changes, if any, Apple has done to these >disk drives? Yes, Apple sometimes have short supply of 40 meg disks. They simply use 50 meg ones, but to prevent people like you and me (i.e. with a technical skill at least greater than epsilon) from checking different computers and buy the one with the 50-meg-formatted-as-40 drive, they change the firmware so as not to accept more than 40 meg. This I have from someone at applelink in comp.sys.mac.programmer, say maybe three months ago. That doesn't mean it comes from Apple, but it sounds plausible... -- Don't believe a word I say, I always lie.