sdd@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Steve Diamond x6584) (08/20/89)
Several previous articles have discussed booting problems in which the hard disk was intermittently inaccessible. I experienced this problem once at home on my two-month old IIcx. Then I took the machine with me on a two week vacation during which time booting almost always required 2 to 5 minutes of doing restarts, powering the machine on/off, etc. Once the machine booted up it ran fine. Now, I've come back home, ready to take the Mac to the shop before the warranty expires, and (you guessed it) it has booted flawlessly ever since. I'm curious as to how repair shops handle cases like this - Murphy says the Mac will run fine in the shop too. Will my description of the symptoms be sufficient to indicate a definite hardware problem, or will I be told to do a reformat of the disk or equivalent and bring the Mac in when (if) it starts failing again AFTER the warranty expires?! If so, is there some way to "encourage" the Mac to fail to boot more regularly - short of letting it slide off the table :-) - so the problem can be isolated? If I have identified a problem during the warranty period, which the repair shop can't reproduce, am I on my own, or is there some implicit extension of the warranty - like I assume there would be if a hardware component were fixed shortly before the warranty expired, and the new component failed, say, two months later. Steve Diamond JHU/APL (301)953-6584
blythedr@ingr.com (Dennis Blythe x6096) (08/21/89)
in article <2745@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu>, sdd@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Steve Diamond x6584) says: > > Several previous articles have discussed booting problems in which the hard > disk was intermittently inaccessible. I experienced this problem once at home > on my two-month old IIcx. Then I took the machine with me on a two week > vacation during which time booting almost always required 2 to 5 minutes of > doing restarts, powering the machine on/off, etc. Once the machine booted up > it ran fine. Now, I've come back home, ready to take the Mac to the shop > before the warranty expires, and (you guessed it) it has booted flawlessly > ever since. > > I'm curious as to how repair shops handle cases like this - Murphy says the > Mac will run fine in the shop too. Will my description of the symptoms be > sufficient to indicate a definite hardware problem, or will I be told to do > a reformat of the disk or equivalent and bring the Mac in when (if) it starts > failing again AFTER the warranty expires?! If so, is there some way to > "encourage" the Mac to fail to boot more regularly - short of letting it slide > off the table :-) - so the problem can be isolated? If I have identified > a problem during the warranty period, which the repair shop can't > reproduce, am I on my own, or is there some implicit extension of the > warranty - like I assume there would be if a hardware component were fixed > shortly before the warranty expired, and the new component failed, say, two > months later. > > Steve Diamond > JHU/APL > (301)953-6584 Steve, I've had the same problem with our MAC IIx and I've been able to run the disk first aid utility that came with the mac and it tells me that the hard disk needs repair. I go ahead with it and then it does fine. One time I had to invoke the chooser and tell it to startup with hd. Then finally, it died and never came back at all. The warrentee was still good and the repair shop replaced the hard drive and said this happens quite often.....whats the deal? anybody else have problems, is apple raking up on repairs on faulty equipment? What???????????? _______________________________________________________________________________ \ \ ingr!b11!skylark!dennis _ /) \ Dennis Blythe \`o_O' "Ackk, phtt!" \ Intergraph =( )= \ (205)-772-6096 U \ USA \ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
friedman@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Daniel Friedman) (08/21/89)
In article <2745@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> sdd@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu writes: >Several previous articles have discussed booting problems in which the hard >disk was intermittently inaccessible. I experienced this problem once at home >on my two-month old IIcx. Then I took the machine with me on a two week >vacation during which time booting almost always required 2 to 5 minutes of >doing restarts, powering the machine on/off, etc. Once the machine booted up >it ran fine. Now, I've come back home, ready to take the Mac to the shop >before the warranty expires, and (you guessed it) it has booted flawlessly >ever since. > ... stuff deleted ... This sounds like a problem I had two years ago with the Apple 20 Mb drive in my Mac II. The problem turned out to be a buggy EPROM in the drive controller, and the fix was to claim Apple's (free) EPROM upgrade. Warning: boring story about Apple dealership incompetence follows. As an aside, the way I found out about the EPROM problem/fix was that the technician in the campus bookstore from which I had bought the computer managed to find a message on AppleLink about it. He then ordered the replacement EPROM, and, fortunately, also printed out a copy of the message and gave it to me. I took a job elsewhere before that EPROM ever arrived, so I had to go to an Apple dealership near my new residence to get the repair done. I told them exactly what the problem was, what the fix was, and to look it up on AppleLink. This left them "baffled". Finally I dug up the copy of the AppleLink message that the campus bookstore technician had given me, and the bozos finally did the repair. If I hadn't had that printout, I would never have been able to get my Mac fixed.
spector@brillig.umd.edu (Lee Spector) (08/21/89)
In article <2745@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> sdd@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu writes: >Several previous articles have discussed booting problems in which the hard >disk was intermittently inaccessible. [stuff deleted] > >I'm curious as to how repair shops handle cases like this - [stuff deleted] >Steve Diamond When my first HD80 was having intermittent boot problems I called about 15 shops to ask how they would handle it. Almost all of them said they would have to "watch the unit fail" - i.e., I would have to leave the thing with them for several days while they power-cycled it, waiting for a problem that might not occur. I DID find a few, however, that said they were familiar enough with the problem that they'd just replace the drive without waiting for failure. The real trick was convincing a shop to ORDER the new drive BEFORE I brought in my unit. My replacement drive is less than 2 weeks old and it is alreading having the same intermittent boot problems. Since replacing the hard drives on new macs is now really routine maintenance - sort of like changing (or even just CHECKING!) the oil in a car - one would hope that they would at least make it easier to accomplish... -Lee (spector@brillig.umd.edu)