arussell@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU (Anne Russell) (12/04/90)
I have a 286 Z-248, 640 K RAM, 2 MB expanded memory (Intel expansion board), 80 MB HD (Seagate). I ran resident PC-Cache, WP Shell. I had no problems at all until I installed WP 5.1 last January. Since then I I have had disastrous corruptions (both documents and directories) and even a crash. Our tech shop has run numerous diagnostics and can finding nothing wrong with the hardware. I have disabled everything, even the memory board. All the corrupt documents are WP documents. I have also had cross-linking occur (this destroyed five subdirectories and somehow also involved PC Tools). The corrupt documents displayed a numbre of symptoms - freezing, strange control codes replacing text, end of document markers disappearing (so the document looped), documents truncated or corrupting in the middle somewhere. WordPerfect would not admit to any "official" problems, but did mention they had received some incompatibility reports with Zeniths. After the last big crash, we low-level formatted the HD, reformatted, and I reinstalled everything. Still some problems, but mostly freezing. I finally gave up and am awaiting a 386/25 Gateway 2000, with 4 MB RAM, 80 MB HD, true VGA monitor (1024 x 728), 2 drives, mouse - all for only $2500!! Anyone heard about similar problems? I suppose this is the wrong group, but has anyone had experience with Gateway? The university I work for has a contract with Zenith and there are lots of them around. --------------------------- Anne Russell, OA Support CSU, Chico, California arussell@oavax.csuchico.edu
heflin@cod.NOSC.MIL (Greg R. Heflin) (12/04/90)
In article <00940A14.1E1B33E0@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU> arussell@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU (Anne Russell) writes: >I have a 286 Z-248, 640 K RAM, 2 MB expanded memory (Intel expansion board), >80 MB HD (Seagate). I ran resident PC-Cache, WP Shell. I had no problems >at all until I installed WP 5.1 last January. Since then I I have had >............[deleted]....... >Anne Russell, OA Support >CSU, Chico, California >arussell@oavax.csuchico.edu We have over 200 zeniths both 286 and 386 and run wp 4.2, 5.0, and 5.1. We have never run into a problem like that. I would first suspect your cache program. Did you try running without a disk cache? There is one pesky machine that does have problems. It has a Paradise VGA card (I think-off the top of my head). Whenever a spell check is done and a word is found that either begins with the letter 'n' OR is not in the dictionary the screen seems to change mode - the bottom half of all the characters disappear and the characters become a string of dots. This is the only machine it happens on and the problem is very repeatable on demand! Anyone have any ideas? (I think it is a hardware problem and not a WP problem) -gregory heflin navelex,sd -- -gregory Just my two cents which shouldn't make a flame, unless you rub them real hard.
RFM@psuvm.psu.edu (12/04/90)
Did the WP5.1 problems occur using the ZCache.sys program for hd caching? I've heard stories about weird things with other caches. Also,I know lots of people who do WP5.1 on 248s and all other Zenith systems. Bob M., PSU-Hbg
userDHAL@mts.ucs.UAlberta.CA (David Halliwell) (12/05/90)
In article <00940A14.1E1B33E0@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU>, arussell@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU (Anne Russell) writes: >I have a 286 Z-248, 640 K RAM, 2 MB expanded memory (Intel expansion board), >80 MB HD (Seagate). I ran resident PC-Cache, WP Shell. I had no problems >at all until I installed WP 5.1 last January. Since then I I have had >disastrous corruptions (both documents and directories) and even a crash. [more tales of misery deleted] >Anyone heard about similar problems? I suppose this is the wrong group, >but has anyone had experience with Gateway? The university I work for >has a contract with Zenith and there are lots of them around. > . My first question would be "what version of DOS are you using?" When I first got WP 5.1, I too had a few glitches and bugs. No disk trashing (thank God), but WP would freeze up from time to time, and I I couldn't save files on occassion. I thought it might be bugs in the first release of WP 5.1, but then I received a later version of WP and still had the same problems. However, I did ultimately find a solution. . I have a Zenith Z-248, and was using Zenith MS-DOS 3.3+. I later bought a Zenith laptop (Yes, our university also has a contract with Zenith), which also had MS-DOS 3.3+, but all the files had later dates. On a whim, I installed this DOS version on the Z-248, and I no longer had any problems with WP 5.1. . I also had a problem with video drivers in WP 5.1 on my Z-248. I have one of the earlier "VGA" cards, which has only the 640x480 - 16 colour mode; not the 320x200 - 256 colour mode. This video board will NOT run a lot of VGA software. At one point, I had WP set up to use the VGA text driver, and when I used "List Files" I was getting all sorts of scrambled directories. Panic-stricken, I would exit to DOS, only to find that all was well. I "fixed" this by letting WP autodetect the text driver, and have had no problems since. . Try a new version of DOS on your Zenith. My COMMAND.COM is dated Oct. 31, 1988. The problem-ridden version was only a few months earlier. You may also need to think about BIOS updates. You Zenith "dealer" should be able to help. Dave Halliwell
price@chakra.unl.edu (Chad Price) (12/06/90)
In <00940A14.1E1B33E0@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU> arussell@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU (Anne Russell) writes: >I have a 286 Z-248, 640 K RAM, 2 MB expanded memory (Intel expansion board), >80 MB HD (Seagate). I ran resident PC-Cache, WP Shell. I had no problems >at all until I installed WP 5.1 last January. Since then I I have had >disastrous corruptions (both documents and directories) and even a crash. I strongly recommend updating to the most recent release of Word Perfect (8-20-90??) The earlier versions had some problems. Additionally, early verison of EMS drivers are mostly not truely 4.0 compliant. Tell Word Perfect that you have an earlier EMS driver (/32 parameter I think). Beyind that, the only machine I've seen with real problems with WP 5.1 is my old Z-158, and its so old it is not worth running all of the hardware tests to see if I have any intermittant memory problems or similar. My Z-386/16 has absolutely no problem with WP 5.1. I do hawoever have an updated ROM because the older ROMS were incompatible with the Zenith Memory Cache card. After trying the software solutions, then suspect the hardware. chad price price@fergvax.unl.edu