Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!dgp.toronto.edu!ian
From: ian@dgp.toronto.edu (Ian S. Small)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: Third Party Disks for 4D/25
Summary: buyer beware
Message-ID: <1989Oct27.184925.13487@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Date: 27 Oct 89 22:49:26 GMT
References: <8910252145.AA09555@aero4.larc.nasa.gov> <2541@munnari.oz.au>
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
Lines: 29

A word of warning re third party disks - what works now may not
work tomorrow.  We have been running Wren V's on both Personal Irises
and Power Irises without too much distress after some initial teething
problems.

One of the Personal Iris/Wren V combinations just upgraded to 3.2 and
guess what?  His Wren V doesn't behave any more.  SGI's response appears
to be:  "We didn't support it, it's your problem."  We have only tried to
upgrade the one machine, so cannot determine if this problem is endemic
across the entire line, or whether it is just Personal Irises, or
just 4D/25's for that matter.

But when the manufacturer breaks things that used to work (and doesn't
offer any help in fixing the problem), that's good cause for customer
dissatisfaction.  While we are used to doing a lot of hacking, and aren't
terribly bothered by the prospect of doing a little more, hacking to
fix things that shouldn't have to be fixed is simply annoying.

Seems to me that the glow that appeared about SGI products and SGI
willing-to-pleaseness (gack, what a word!) around about the time of
the Personal Iris introduction is fast disappearing.  We should know
better, of course, having been original owners of a 2400T, but hey,
one could always hope.
-- 
Ian S. Small (416) 978-6619       Dynamic Graphics Project
				  Computer Systems Research Institute
BITNET:      ian@dgp.utoronto	  University of Toronto
EAN:         ian@dgp.toronto.cdn  Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A4
UUCP/CSNET:  ian@dgp.toronto.edu