Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ukma!phoenix From: phoenix@ms.uky.edu (R'ykandar Korra'ti) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: External drives destroyed... Message-ID: <13735@s.ms.uky.edu> Date: 19 Jan 90 05:57:18 GMT References: Reply-To: phoenix@ms.uky.edu (R'ykandar Korra'ti) Organization: El'n'tk National Spaceport, Mission Control Lines: 55 In article dg49+@andrew.cmu.edu (David A. Gillespie) writes: >Could my Amiga 500 be causing this problem? If it is, how much is it >going to cost me to have it fixed? It's not the A500. Read on. >By the way (almost forgot), it's an "AIR drive", and the dealer says ^^^ ^^^^^ (this is the problem) >that they have only had four bad drives within the past sixth months, >and I've had two of them. They also say that there was once a bunch of >drives in a series that were all bad because they were missing a >component, but that other people who have bought "AIR" drives have had >no problems. >Dave I also have the extreme misfortune of owning an Megatronics AIR drive; I posed about my many many problems with both the drives and the company on this system. To summarize: 1) AIR drives do NOT, repeat do NOT work reliably on A500 systems of any type. I telephoned them about this; the conversation went roughly along these lines; AIR> You have an A500, don't you? ME> Yes... AIR> Well, that's the problem. ME> You mean that the drive doesn't work right on the A500? AIR> Yeah, you shouldn't have bought the 500. ME> You are advertising this drive as being compatible with all Amiga systems. This is called fraud. About this time they agreed to let me send the drive in for evaluation (they said there was nothing wrong once it got there, but sent me a new one anyway. Twice. This would be good, except that it took mentioning the word "mail fraud" to get them moving...) In all fairness, I did eventually contact ONE person at AIR who could be civil on the telephone. Only one. I tried each of the three drives I got on multiple Amiga systems. NONE have worked right. The most recent will write correctly MOST of the time - the first two could not filecopy a the workbench disk without generating write errors. It also has the "disk popped out" delusions you describe. However, after fighting them for some many weeks, I decided that this was functional enough. 2) AIR/Megatronics knows about this problem and chooses to ignore it. I cannot more strongly urge against dealing with this company in any form shape or fashion. Their disregard for proper hardware - and in a couple of calls, stunningly insulting attitude - indicates an astounding degree of incompetence at their company. They blamed the problem on the A500 each time; either the CIA chip (checked out fine), the power supply (checked out fine; also am now using a Phoenix replacement unit, which did not fix the problem), and the motherboard (Why? I think it's called "grasping for straws") design. 3) Your Amiga is, in all probability, fine. I tried a different company's external drive when I was trying to get the AIR units working; it worked perfectly, passing all the tests I could throw at it. Power down, go back to the AIR drive, massive failures. 4) Get your money back if you can. Buy another company's external drive. I used a friend's California Access as a test unit; it seemed to work alright. My internal Commodore drive works great; maybe the Commodore external unit works as well - if it does, it'll be a nice, solid, unit. Anyway. Good luck - dealing with these guys, you'll need it. - R'ykandar. -- | R'ykandar Korra'ti, Editor, LOW ORBIT | phoenix@ms.uky.edu | CIS 72406,370 | | Elfinkind, Unite! | phoenix@ukma.bitnet | PLink: Skywise | QLink: Bearclaw |