d_alvear@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dom Alvear) (12/01/90)
In article <1130@banyan.UUCP> car@banyan.UUCP (Chris Ramos@HwEng@Banyan) writes: >As a side note: I was looking thru the Tech Specialties catalog >and I noticed that it said something about a Mega slot uprgrade >for the ST. Anybody see or hear about this thing? > I would be very weary of anything that tech specialities produces. I bought two of their "so called" CPU cases for my 520 and 1040. Not only did it take over six months just to get the thing working (They had many lame excuses as to why I wasn't getting the whole product.), but they still haven't given me everything that was promised. (I'm missing a delay timer that was supposed to hold the power off the motherboard until the HD's powered up.) I gave up on them after many phone calls and much long distance $$$. Stay away from them. They will give you a massive headache if you deal with them. Dom Alvear (d_alvear@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu) (ai02@crabcake.cs.jhu.edu) >car@banyan.com
andrew@cs.utk.edu (Andrew Krzywdzinski) (12/01/90)
In article <7036@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> d_alvear@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dom Alvear) writes: >I would be very weary of anything that tech specialities produces. I >bought two of their "so called" CPU cases for my 520 and 1040. Not >only did it take over six months just to get the thing working (They >had many lame excuses as to why I wasn't getting the whole product.), >but they still haven't given me everything that was promised. (I'm [stuff deleted] >phone calls and much long distance $$$. Stay away from them. They >will give you a massive headache if you deal with them. I bought a memory upgrade for my 1040ST (2.5MB) from them about 2 years ago. The documentation must've been written by a hacker subscribing to the rule "if it was hard to write, it must be hard to read". Anyway, by reading between the lines, and half-guessing, I installed it myself. Unfortunately I didn't follow their advice, and did not disconnect the old RAM :-(. After a month of correct operation, the memory started going flakey. I took it to my local dealer, who proceeded to disconnect the old memory, and discovered 2 bad 1 Mb chips (which apparently croaked while "fighting" with the old RAM). He replaced them, and ever since I had a rock-solid 2.5MB. So I guess the moral is that their product was (is), in effect, good, and only because of my stupidity I had to do some extra work. So in all fairness, one can't just generalize and write them off as bad guys... On the other hand, I agree that their Customer Support leaves much to be desired. I remember having trouble getting some additional info from them. But if enough people complain to them, I'm sure they would try to improve in that area... I am not trying to make excuses for them, but it just seems to me that the ST needs developers. If they're gone, the ST will die. ------ While on the subject, I might as well give my vote for the lamest, LAMEST AtariST product ever. It is, by far, the UCSD Pascal system from Pecan. They won't answer any questions after your Customer ID has expired (90 days, I believe), and the bloody thing doesn't even work ! $200 for 5 single-sided disks, what a bargain :-#. Now THEY are the ones who EARNED THE RIGHT to be boycotted. -andrew krzywdzinski (andrew@cs.utk.edu)