rolee@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Profess'nal Agitator) (04/26/91)
This is addressed primarily to the Commodore people:
I purchased an A3000 25/50 through our math department about two weeks ago.
When it arrived two Tuesdays ago (16th), I spent the better part of last
weekend retrieving the necessary cables from the local dealer, and trying to
mount a Plus 105Q drive that I had cannibalized from my now-sold A2000.
After posting to this newsgroup for some help, and despite following the
instructions that the manual claims will work, I finally gave up Monday
morning and took it in to a service center to be done, thinking it would
take, at most, an afternoon to complete. I was told that my main problem
was controller incompatibility (the drive had been mounted to an ICD
Advantage 2000 controller, which was sold with the A2000) and it should be
ready by 2:00 pm that afternoon.
Now, it is Thursday, and the serviceman wants to charge me $45/hr x 20 hrs =
$900, just to get a drive mounted! He says that since I am a student, he'll
knock off 50%, but this is after he previously told me that he wouldn't go
over $100.
These are my main questions:
1. Is this problem covered under warranty?
I think it should be because Commodore made a claim (in the manual) that I
would be able to attach 7 SCSI devices to the built-in controller, and yet
the system failed when I attempted to install one. Each of the drives
worked fine individually, but they refused to daisy chain. The problem did
not lie in either the terminator resistor packs or the SCSI id. Remember, I
did spend a whole weekend over this, so don't flame me for overlooking these
possibilities.
2. Is there any specific name I can call at Commodore, either West Chester
or their West Coast distributor?
3. What can I do about getting my computer back?
It is past 5pm here right now. But, tomorrow morning, I will be making
calls to the local Better Business Bureau, and talking to school
administration officials about this. The serviceman claims that he had to
do something about ``resetting the matrix'' and all sorts of other things to
the motherboard, and that these adjustments are not covered by the
warranty. That sounds like a load of bull to me. I have owned the computer
for less than a month. Hell, it's been on for less than a day. I am not
about to spend $450 just to get a lousy drive installed, much less the
original $900.
I have also been told that the $100 limit he quoted me earlier is a verbal
agreement, and that the serviceman is bound to it. Furthermore, any attempt
to change that agreement, required that I be notified, which, of course, I
was not. I will gladly pay $100, maybe even $150. That seems reasonable to
me even if it did seem as if the serviceman didn't seem to know completely
what he was doing. He told me that he has been talking with Commodore
service all week, which doesn't inspire a great bit of confidence on my
part, in his abilities. This also worries me that unkosher things may have
been done to my CPU because of possible serviceman incompetence.
Any help from a Commodore employee would be deeply appreciated.
And for any Claremont College net.readers, be wary of Technical Services on
Padua (in Upland).
Thanx in advance,
Agitator
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Roderick Lee "The Professional Agitator" Harvey Mudd Collegejesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) (04/27/91)
In article <11908@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> rolee@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Profess'nal Agitator) writes: >This is addressed primarily to the Commodore people: This is NOT an official answer. >Now, it is Thursday, and the serviceman wants to charge me $45/hr x 20 hrs = >$900, just to get a drive mounted! He says that since I am a student, he'll >knock off 50%, but this is after he previously told me that he wouldn't go >over $100. Personally, that does seem rather excessive, since I assume all he did was turn off reselection. Have you asked him exactly what he did or plans to do? >1. Is this problem covered under warranty? > >I think it should be because Commodore made a claim (in the manual) that I >would be able to attach 7 SCSI devices to the built-in controller, and yet >the system failed when I attempted to install one. Each of the drives >worked fine individually, but they refused to daisy chain. The problem did >not lie in either the terminator resistor packs or the SCSI id. Remember, I >did spend a whole weekend over this, so don't flame me for overlooking these >possibilities. See my note concerning 2091's and warrantees from earlier today (logical today, not physical). You want rev 6.6 roms for the 2091. >2. Is there any specific name I can call at Commodore, either West Chester >or their West Coast distributor? Perhaps you should call the main commodore number and get in touch with the customer satisfaction people. After all, it's their job. >administration officials about this. The serviceman claims that he had to >do something about ``resetting the matrix'' and all sorts of other things to What's a "matrix"? >the motherboard, and that these adjustments are not covered by the >warranty. That sounds like a load of bull to me. I have owned the computer No official comment. -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com BIX: rjesup Disclaimer: Nothing I say is anything other than my personal opinion. Thus spake the Master Ninjei: "To program a million-line operating system is easy, to change a man's temperament is more difficult." (From "The Zen of Programming") ;-)
valentin@public.BTR.COM (Valentin Pepelea) (04/27/91)
In article <11908@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> rolee@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Profess'nal Agitator) writes: > >Now, it is Thursday, and the serviceman wants to charge me $45/hr x 20 hrs = >$900, just to get a drive mounted! He says that since I am a student, he'll >knock off 50%, but this is after he previously told me that he wouldn't go >over $100. This is utter nonsense! He had no right to spend more time/money on the problem than he limited himself to. Furthermore, it is ridiculous to charge two to three times more the cost of a new drive, or five times more than the cost of a working controller, just to make your drive work. If he had given you an estimate of $100, then parhaps he may charge you as much as 20% over that initial estimate. I suggest you offer him $100, and take him to court if he refuses to return your Amiga. Make sure you follow standard politeness procedures though, first make your demand in writing, so that you may prove in court that you exhausted all other steps before dragging the dweeb into court. But before that, ask him to give you a detailed written technical description of the initial problem, as well as all steps that he took to solve it. Then have it analyzed by a technically knowlegable friend. Perhaps you could even post it to this newsgroup. We want to hear what this noble technician has to say. Valentin -- "An operating system without virtual memory Name: Valentin Pepelea is an operating system without virtue." Phone: (408) 985-1700 Usenet: mips!btr!valentin - Ancient Inca Proverb Internet: valentin@btr.com
farren@well.sf.ca.us (Mike Farren) (04/30/91)
valentin@public.BTR.COM (Valentin Pepelea) writes: >rolee@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Profess'nal Agitator) writes: >>Now, it is Thursday, and the serviceman wants to charge me $45/hr x 20 hrs = >>$900, just to get a drive mounted! He says that since I am a student, he'll >>knock off 50%, but this is after he previously told me that he wouldn't go >>over $100. >This is utter nonsense! No kidding. I've done installations and service for people, both friends and clients, and I have only one word to describe what this guy is trying to pull - fraud. I'd suggest getting his name, and any other information you might be able to gather, and reporting this bastard to as many agencies as will listen, before he manages to rip off someone more naive than you are. "Adjust the motherboard matrix", indeed... reminds me of the old "You've got a bad frammis on the A-Frame, gonna cost you a bundle" car mechanics scam. BTW - I would charge you one hour, at $60/hr, and would guarantee performance for that price. And I don't come cheap. >We want to hear what this noble technician has to say. Personally, I've already heard enough. His response might be appropriate for rec.humor.funny, but offers nothing more than that. -- Mike Farren farren@well.sf.ca.us
daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) (05/01/91)
In article <11908@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> rolee@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Profess'nal Agitator) writes: >This is addressed primarily to the Commodore people: >I purchased an A3000 25/50 through our math department about two weeks ago. >When it arrived two Tuesdays ago (16th), I spent the better part of last >weekend retrieving the necessary cables from the local dealer, and trying to >mount a Plus 105Q drive that I had cannibalized from my now-sold A2000. ... >I was told that my main problem was controller incompatibility (the drive >had been mounted to an ICD Advantage 2000 controller, which was sold with >the A2000) and it should be ready by 2:00 pm that afternoon. Any hard disk formatted according to the RDB specifications should be plug and play, assuming it is electrically connected properly. I have no knowledge of the ICD firmware, it could be that they have messed something up. I have personally swapped A2091, A3000, and Hardframe disks around and they all play together. One thing to watch out for is booting order. I don't know the details of WHY things work this way, just that they do. Essentially, every disk partition is marked with a boot priority, and the system boots from the first disk of the highest priority in the chain. Apparently, however, not every controller agrees upon which disk at any given priority level is first. When I traded an A2091 prototype out and a Hardframe we had lying around into my office A2500 here last week or so, I thought the system had gone bonkers. It booted to a blank CLI. This actually turned out to be my documentation partition, not the main system partition I had intended to boot from. A quick going over of the system with RDPrep set all the partitions down in priority, the one I wanted up, and voila, it booted just dandy from the A2091-formatted hard disk. Far as I can tell, the A3000 is only different from this in where it finds its boot partition. It needs WB_1.3: or WB_2.x: to get a Kickstart, other than that it obeys the same priority rules. On the A3000 under 2.0, you can peruse the list of hard disks by booting with both mouse buttons down after Kickstart loads. >Now, it is Thursday, and the serviceman wants to charge me $45/hr x 20 hrs = >$900, just to get a drive mounted! Geeze, that's more than I make an hour. And he doesn't seem to have been real helpful. >1. Is this problem covered under warranty? I can't imagine Commodore accepts responsibility for disks mal-formatted by other companies' software, if that is indeed the problem you have run into. >I think it should be because Commodore made a claim (in the manual) that I >would be able to attach 7 SCSI devices to the built-in controller, and yet >the system failed when I attempted to install one. Though according to your report, it failed based on the ICD format, not on the presence of the disk itself. That could make sense -- a blank disk is no problem, it contains nothing meaningful. Something that's almost, but not quite correct is the source of most problems you're likely to run into. >The serviceman claims that he had to do something about ``resetting the >matrix'' and all sorts of other things to the motherboard, and that these >adjustments are not covered by the warranty. That sounds like a load of bull >to me. I agree. I know that motherboard pretty well, and I can tell you with all certainty that there is no "matrix" to reset. The only thing that could be on the motherboard at all that relates to SCSI are terminator packs, which they stopped using on A3000 motherboards last summer. If you have only had this machine for less than a month, I don't believe there is anything on the motherboard that anyone would mess with in trying to bring up the SCSI bus. > Roderick Lee "The Professional Agitator" Harvey Mudd College -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight" -R.E.M.