pierre@pro-graphics.cts.com (Pierre Altamore) (09/17/90)
On 11 Sep 90 20:14:44 GMT harding%b56vxg.dnet@kodak.com (JON HARDING): >Frankly, I don't know whether the M.A.S.T drives are any good or not but >given my experience so far I can't recommend doing business with them. This >is my opinion only and should not be construed as representing anyone but >myself. Ditto for me on all of the above.. here's my M.A.S.T. experience... You should have called them first, you would have been unwittingly forewarned! I noticed a few interesting products in one of their ads and gave them a ring to talk about them. Talk about inept morons. I'm calling to inquire about purchasing an evpensive rw optical drive and they can't even tell me if it'll work on an Amiga! me> What SCSI card do I need? them> Gee.. I don't know?! me> Well, do you supply drivers for it? them> No.. me> Have you ever used it with an Amiga? them> I'm not sure.. me> You expect me to buy this $3000+ drive not knowing it'll work for me?! them> er.. well.. uhmm.. me> Are you DAFT?! them> Can I call you back on that? me> <click> That was the gist of the conversation (really!). It was very educational. I wouldn't buy a blank floppy disk from them. UUCP: crash!pro-graphics!pierre | Critical Mass Software ARPA/DDN: pro-graphics!pierre@nosc.mil | P.O. Box 23 Internet: pierre@pro-graphics.cts.com | Short Hills, NJ 07078
hutch@fps.com (Jim Hutchison) (09/19/90)
pierre@pro-graphics.cts.com (Pierre Altamore) and
harding%b56vxg.dnet@kodak.com (JON HARDING) have had some hard times
speaking with M.A.S.T. (USA, Nevada I'd guess).
I'd like to temper there postings with this one. I called up M.A.S.T.
and spoke with a pleasant individual who was conversant in the M.A.S.T.
product line, and offered answers to my techinical questions. I purchased
a tiny tiger II 45Mbyte (for the price and because it is SCSI). It is
a reasonably fast drive, which came formatted and loaded with a usable
filesystem ($608 through the mail, took 3 weeks from my call). She
advised me that their billing goes through Australia and there was a 3%
chance of a billing error, so I should check my bill. It seems that you
need to drop a large bond for U.S. credit card billing, and they are atleast
tracking their error rate on billing...
Having an older A1000, I had a problem with the parallel port adapter
I elected to use (no I haven't yet opted to drop the $$ on a SCSI interface).
The drive performed oddly so I checked my setup, re-read the instructions,
and removed questionable periph's that might be conflicting. No-go. So,
I called M.A.S.T., and spoke with yet another technically versed individual
(not the same one unless (s)he had a quick sex change) and he figured out
the problem after asking a few simple questions. He then asked me if I fealt
comfortable doing the change myself. Seems 3 caps on the parallel port
would rather be 100pf instead of 470pf, but you *could* get away with just
clipping them. He did recommend that I get a proffesional to install 100pf
caps since this was the correct fix.
Off comes the lid, out come the dykes, snip-snip-snip, on-with-the-lid,
and it's been working fine ever since (just 3 weeks).
--
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Jim Hutchison {dcdwest,ucbvax}!ucsd!fps!hutch
Disclaimer: I am not an official spokesman for FPS computing