Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!network.ucsd.edu!celit!hutch
From: hutch@fps.com (Jim Hutchison)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: M.A.S.T. (whiners)
Message-ID: <11212@celit.fps.com>
Date: 18 Sep 90 23:08:46 GMT
References: <4456@crash.cts.com>
Sender: daemon@fps.com
Reply-To: hutch@fps.com (Jim Hutchison)
Organization: FPS Computing
Lines: 34

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