Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: warranty servicing question
Message-ID: <21092@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 30 Apr 91 23:31:57 GMT
References: <11908@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Distribution: na
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 75

In article <11908@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> rolee@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Profess'nal Agitator) writes:
>This is addressed primarily to the Commodore people:

>I purchased an A3000 25/50 through our math department about two weeks ago.
>When it arrived two Tuesdays ago (16th), I spent the better part of last
>weekend retrieving the necessary cables from the local dealer, and trying to
>mount a Plus 105Q drive that I had cannibalized from my now-sold A2000. ...

>I was told that my main problem was controller incompatibility (the drive 
>had been mounted to an ICD Advantage 2000 controller, which was sold with 
>the A2000) and it should be ready by 2:00 pm that afternoon.

Any hard disk formatted according to the RDB specifications should be plug
and play, assuming it is electrically connected properly.  I have no knowledge
of the ICD firmware, it could be that they have messed something up.  I have
personally swapped A2091, A3000, and Hardframe disks around and they all play
together.

One thing to watch out for is booting order.  I don't know the details of WHY
things work this way, just that they do.  Essentially, every disk partition 
is marked with a boot priority, and the system boots from the first disk of
the highest priority in the chain.  Apparently, however, not every controller
agrees upon which disk at any given priority level is first.  When I traded an
A2091 prototype out and a Hardframe we had lying around into my office A2500
here last week or so, I thought the system had gone bonkers.  It booted to a
blank CLI.  This actually turned out to be my documentation partition, not the
main system partition I had intended to boot from.  A quick going over of the
system with RDPrep set all the partitions down in priority, the one I wanted 
up, and voila, it booted just dandy from the A2091-formatted hard disk.

Far as I can tell, the A3000 is only different from this in where it finds its
boot partition.  It needs WB_1.3: or WB_2.x: to get a Kickstart, other than 
that it obeys the same priority rules.  On the A3000 under 2.0, you can peruse
the list of hard disks by booting with both mouse buttons down after Kickstart
loads.

>Now, it is Thursday, and the serviceman wants to charge me $45/hr x 20 hrs =
>$900, just to get a drive mounted!  

Geeze, that's more than I make an hour.  And he doesn't seem to have been
real helpful.

>1.  Is this problem covered under warranty?

I can't imagine Commodore accepts responsibility for disks mal-formatted by
other companies' software, if that is indeed the problem you have run into.

>I think it should be because Commodore made a claim (in the manual) that I
>would be able to attach 7 SCSI devices to the built-in controller, and yet
>the system failed when I attempted to install one.  

Though according to your report, it failed based on the ICD format, not on 
the presence of the disk itself.  That could make sense -- a blank disk is no
problem, it contains nothing meaningful.  Something that's almost, but not
quite correct is the source of most problems you're likely to run into.

>The serviceman claims that he had to do something about ``resetting the 
>matrix'' and all sorts of other things to the motherboard, and that these 
>adjustments are not covered by the warranty.  That sounds like a load of bull
>to me.  

I agree.  I know that motherboard pretty well, and I can tell you with all
certainty that there is no "matrix" to reset.  The only thing that could be
on the motherboard at all that relates to SCSI are terminator packs, which
they stopped using on A3000 motherboards last summer.  If you have only had
this machine for less than a month, I don't believe there is anything on the
motherboard that anyone would mess with in trying to bring up the SCSI bus.

> Roderick Lee         "The Professional Agitator"         Harvey Mudd College


-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
      "That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight" -R.E.M.