Xref: utzoo comp.sys.amiga:75782 comp.sys.amiga.tech:17441 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!apple!portal!cup.portal.com!thad From: thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: HD Errors Message-ID: <37603@cup.portal.com> Date: 5 Jan 91 12:57:22 GMT References: <37492@cup.portal.com> <1991Jan2.190655.15790@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> <1991Jan3.141624.25450@forwiss.uni-passau.de> <1991Jan3.230319.3648@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> <7455@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1991Jan4.191249.14442@jato.jpl Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 97 A short while ago I posted a response to jdickson@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (Jeff Dickson) re: Amiga filesystem fragility, and commented: What does price have to do with it? Once, in a sadistic mood, I "played" with one of the office IBM-PCs (actually an IBM machine) and rebooted it perhaps 30 times in one hour while writing to its HD. Not any problems at all. Robust file system. That was Microsoft's MS-DOS 3.10, circa 1984, 7 years ago. I tormented that system during an office party (yeah, we were all drinking and going crazy! :-) but couldn't get it to fail. Secretary even sat on the keyboard (and she's a B-I-G gal! :-) and that system is still working today in one of our branch offices. THAT's the kind of "robustness" one needs in a business environment. But the real reason for this followup posting is to iterate why I feel the problem(s) with the Amiga's filesystem NEED TO BE FIXED: to improve the "image" of the Amiga, to enhance its credibility, and to prevent any more lost opportunities. Lost opportunities? Yes. Big Bucks. Mucho shekels. Lotsa bread. I posted earlier the anecdote concerning the person for whom I built a HD subsystem for his Amiga ... As another example, I built a complete HD subsystem for an Amiga owned by a colleage in my office. I tested it for two weeks in my lab and it was rock solid, never a problem. If he uses it for more than 2 minutes, he starts getting HD errors requiring reformatting. I bring it back, works fine for me. He tries it again, it goes belly up. After three iterations, I said "to hell with this" and recommended he get a Mac, which he did, and now he left and formed his own company ("Abra-Mac-Dabra") and is doing a booming business and has no HD errors (he simply was NOT an "Amiga" person :-) He gave the Amiga to his son who IS an "Amiga" person and is able to use the SAME system with no problems whatsoever. You figure! :-) I want to elaborate on this as a case history; you may find this interesting. I've mentioned previously that I "do" 4GL products, DBMS products, etc. as part of one company's primary business. Four years ago, a salesman in my company wrote on his own time an application (in my product) as a "Human Resources Management" system (to do all the stuff required under US Federal law for company reporting (to the US Gov't)). It worked so well, he re-wrote it in dBASE on an IBM-PC and left to form his own company, Abra-Ca-Dabra, which is now doing over $10,000,000/year in sales, moved to Florida, and has a staff of over 20 people. The product's name is also "Abra-Ca-Dabra." Two years ago, another salesman in my company wanted to put that product on the Amiga using some dBASE-like clone, and licensed the code from the original person. That's the Amiga system for which I built the HD subsystem. What with the crap dBASE-like clones and the continuous HD errors on his Amiga (only when HE used it! :-), he took my advice, bought a Mac, renamed HIS company to be "Abra-Mac-Dabra" (from "Ami-Ca-Dabra" or whatever :-) and is now succesful selling that Mac-port. Point being: that COULD have been an Amiga product with big-$$$ revenues and a win-win situation for everyone (CBM, the salesman, the Amiga community (due to more Amigas being sold), etc.). When we're talking "business software", we're NOT talking small-potatoes. We sold over 2,000 copies of one of my company's products to the IRS for use on UNIX and with their PC-laptops. Other clients include the world's largest banks (one of which does their daily world-wide traveller's check processing using my product), all branches of the US Armed Forces, foreign governments (why do you think I test modems calling Canada, Chile, England, France, etc.?), etc. I look at some of the above and consider them as lost opportunities for the Amiga due to its one perceived major glaring problem. Believe me, I tried, and convinced the company's Board of Directors to give Ami a try, but we kept getting sabotaged by several 3rd party Amiga-vendors and by intrinsic problems such as the rash of HD problems. So now we're going to UNIX since the "window of opportunity" there is still open and because UNIX has become a de facto "standard" due to Federal procurement mandates. And I look forward to SVR4 on the Amiga as a "second chance" for our products on an Amiga platform. And as I commented previously here and in comp.unix.aux, it's my belief that A/UX is an Apple marketing-ploy to get Macs into the federal sector (re: the federal "UNIX" mandate for multi-tasking), confirmed by public and email statements from members of Apple's A/UX development team who asked me: "If you didn't want the MacOS, why'd you get A/UX?" In every respect except filesystem integrity, the Amiga is by far a better system than the IBM-PCs and Macs, but clients' perception of the Amiga as a "toy" due to its problem(s) prevents my company making an inroad with the Amiga and I'm sure is hurting other people's efforts too. [This commentary should also more completely answer those who've called asking why I didn't renew my company's "commercial developer" status for the Amiga; for what it's worth, I did renew the Apple Developer because they do have a form of UNIX and it more-or-less works though it's horribly obsolete.] I hope some of this stimulates further discussion. Let the fires F-L-A-M-E ! Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]