musa@brahms.berkeley.edu (Math Undergrad Student Assoc) (08/19/88)
Thanx for all the replys to my posting. The vote was evenly distributed between the positive and negative. What is interesting is that the negative votes came from those that do not or did not own the machine while all the positive votes came from those that did (or do). The two big negatives seem to be the reputed flaky power supply and compatibility problems. One person said that the price of a new power supply was around $500.00 so I placed a call to Unisys and was told $110.00 retail less 40% to "Consultants". Leading Edge is aware of the problem and Geoff Burr, then VP of Leading Edge, sayes in "Compatibles Update" aug. 1984 PC WORLD that Leading Edge recalled the first 1170 units and that 100% of product was repaired within weeks. Leading Edges 800# is constantly busy so I could not find out anything form them directly. The compatibility problems seem to be more DOS related than any thing else. Feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) says that things can be set straight by using v3.2 SperryDOS. This sounds correct as both Sperry and Leading Edge in the same aug. 1984 PC WORLD article report that the machines that they market are the same down to the ROM. There is also a PC compatible comparison study in the April 1984 PC WORLD that shows the Sperry PC as 99 44/100 % compatible and the Leading Edge as 66%. (I'm not sure if this is a comment on the DOS variations or the testing methods used in the comparison.) The power supply for this early model is 97.5 watts. Thanx again to all Jonathan White musa@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU