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From: davison@menudo.uh.edu (Dan Davison)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Sun-3/80-SOS 4.1-floppy disk drive WARNING
Keywords: Hardware
Message-ID: <1990Oct7.221249.25148@rice.edu>
Date: 7 Oct 90 21:30:00 GMT
Sender: sun-spots-request@rice.edu
Organization: Sun-Spots
Lines: 28
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
Originator: spots@walhalla.rice.edu
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 327, message 8

Sun has just deleted all the Sun-3 hardware from the latest price book; I
guess they're not interested in the existing hw either.

Background:
Sun-3/80 with floppy disk drive.  Recently upgraded to SOS 4.1.  When
formatting disks in the drive with the command "fdformat" I got an
error at the end, when "verifying" the disk and writing the magic SOS
hoojoo on the disk.  "fdformat -v" fails immediately.  This happens
with lots of different disks.  So, I call Sun support.

A very nice tech support person informs me that (1) it is a known bug in
4.1 on the 3/80; (2) they are "working on it"; (3) there is no intention
to (or mechanism for) informing 3/80 owners when the fix is available; (4)
you should NOT use the disks that pass the format (they just don't verify)
and newfs successfully because data could be lost.

Gee.  If I wanted to get ******** on hardware, I would have bought DEC.

It's sad to see what has happened to Sun.  I estimate about an 8 year lag
between the decay vis a vis their customers and DEC's similar decay.
Except that it took DEC a LOT longer to get as nasty (on all fronts:
salescritters, support, hw, sw)  as Sun has become.

Anybody know of a friendly workstation vendor?

dan davison
davison@uh.edu
DAVISON@UHOU (BITNET)