kjh@pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) (03/02/90)
I advise you not to buy Everex products. I just recently got a Seagate ST-4096 hard disk which was repackaged by Everex. The documentation which came with the disk was incorrect. The software which came with the disk has serious bugs. Following the documentation written by Everex exactly, I was unable to get the drive to work. After calling the vendor, and talking to their technical support people, I learned that the Everex documentation is wrong. They give faulty information on how to configure the jumpers on disk drives. (The correct information will follow later.) After following the instructions from the vendor tech support people, the disk worked. According to the vendor, Everex admits that their documentation is incorrect, but they won't fix it. Note: The "drive select" jumpers should be set as follows: If you have a cable with a twist in it, the DS jumpers on BOTH disks should be set to the second addressable drive. For hard disks, this is drive 2 because addressing starts with DS1; for floppy drives, this is drive 1 because addressing starts with DS0. The drive on the end of the cable with the twist will be the first of the two drives (eg. A:) and the other drive will be the second of the two drives (eg. B:). If you have a cable without a twist in it, and a single disk drive, the DS jumper should be set to the first addressable drive. For hard disks, this is DS1; for floppy drives this is DS0. Using the software provided by Everex led to other working systems in my computer becoming non-functional. After calling the vendor, and talking to their technical support people, I learned that Everex admits that their software does not work. The vendor agreed to ship me a copy of Seagate's software. I haven't received it yet, but I expect it to work just fine. Note: The specific problem I had was: when using the everex device driver "evdisk.sys", my 720k B: drive would not function correctly. You could put in a disk, do a "dir" command, switch disks, do another "dir" command, and see the directory of the first disk. You could "cd" to directories on the first disk which did not exist on the second disk which is actually in the drive. The only (hokey) way out of this problem was to force a drive read fault, to get the "Abort, Retry, or Ignore?" message. This is definitely a bug, and not a feature. (If the evdisk.sys device driver is not used, then 50M of the 80M disk is wasted under any version of DOS previous to 4.0.) Rule 1 Don't buy Everex products. Rule 2 Specify to vendors that you won't accept Everex products. Rule 3 If you buy something, and it turns out to be an Everex product, see rule 1 and rule 2. Return it. Ken Hendrickson N8DGN kjh@usc.edu ...!uunet!usc!pollux!kjh
darcy@druid.uucp (D'Arcy J.M. Cain) (03/02/90)
In article <23188@usc.edu> kjh@pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) writes: > > I advise you not to buy Everex products. > And I advise you not to take the advice of someone who doesn't know which group to post to. Yes I know he did follow-up to comp.sys.ibm.pc but that only means that those who read one of the above groups but not c.s.i.p will only see the posting of one person without seeing balancing viewpoints from others. If you are in that category then you should either completely ignore Kenneth's rantings or else subscribe to c.s.i.p. to read the whole story. BTW: I have been dealing with Everex for years without having the problems that Kenneth seems to be having. But then I know how to connect a hard drive. Maybe Kenneth should stick to buying complete systems. Follow-ups to comp.sys.ibm.pc -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid) | Thank goodness we don't get all D'Arcy Cain Consulting | the government we pay for. West Hill, Ontario, Canada | (416) 281-6094 |