leff@smu.UUCP (11/26/83)
#N:smu:14300005:000:497 smu!leff Nov 24 17:59:00 1983 We recently had to deal with a non-function Kaypro II here that wouldn't boot properly. When this matter was discussed with the TRW service station, the manager said that the Kaypro is generating more service calls than any other machine. This is surprising as most of the reviews of the trade press seems to thing good things about Kaypro equipment. I did too and don't know what to make of the fact in the above paragraph. What experiences have other people in Netland had with the Kaypro.
SPURGEON@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (11/28/83)
From: Bud Spurgeon <SPURGEON@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA> The Kaypro I own and the Kaypros owned by friends of mine have all worked since day one. I HAVE heard of Kaypro II problems with the disk drives. The Kaypros with drives mounted horizontally and stacked on top of one another (the vast majority) seem to be prone to drive overheating problems, especially if used in hot environments (as one might expect). There's no fan in the Kaypro so heat buildup can cause intermittent failures. Addition of a small fan, or circulating the air around the machine seems to help. Kaypro has also had some problems with assembly procedures apparently putting too much stress on disk drive doors with the result that the door hinge assembly breaks. This can be solved by loosening the drives and pulling them forward a bit to relieve the stress. My machine has given no problems in 10 months of use. I've recently modified it for 5 MHZ operation and now I'm eyeing a faster monitor prom and terminal prom set available from Micro Cornucopia magazine. That's one thing I really like about the Kaypro - since it's based on the widely used "Big Board I" there's all sorts of video and disk drive add-ons becoming available for extending the machine. -Bud -------
young.uci-750b%rand-relay@sri-unix.UUCP (11/28/83)
From: Michal Young <young.uci-750b@rand-relay> One reason there might be a lot of service calls for Kaypros is that there are lots and lots of Kaypros out there. Also, early Kaypros (up until about 8 months ago, I think) had a timing problem between the disk controller and CPU. Mine is one of those, and it occasionally writes garbage on a disk, rendering it unreadable. The fix for this problem has been published in Micro-Cornucopia. Also, disk drives don't seem to be well tested on Kaypros-- a large percentage seem to have drive problems within the first month or so. But other than that ... Actually, they seem to be solidly built and dependable after the initial break-in period. One dealer I know recommends setting up an infinite loop copying disk A to B and back, and letting it run for 24 hours, to make sure the drives die in the first few days if they are going to die at all. -- young@uci-750b