Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site uw-beaver Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!cbosgd!ucbvax!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!laser-lovers From: laser-lovers@uw-beaver Newsgroups: fa.laser-lovers Subject: Self-trashing Imagen firmware? Message-ID: <1292@uw-beaver> Date: Sat, 8-Jun-85 02:13:47 EDT Article-I.D.: uw-beave.1292 Posted: Sat Jun 8 02:13:47 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 10-Jun-85 22:09:05 EDT Sender: daemon@uw-beaver Organization: U of Washington Computer Science Lines: 28 From: David Fuchs It seems that every month or two, our Imagen 8/300 stops running after having trashed its boot diskette. I called their customer support folks, who took my name and address, and promised to send out a replacement right away. They did not seem the least bit surprised that this keeps happening. I checked to make sure that we were using the latest firmware (V2.1). "Yes." Well, then, it sure would be nice if there was a console command to let us make a backup copy of our configured firmware disks, so that we wouldn't have downtime waiting for replacements, no? "Well, they don't want you to do that." Not a very nice attitude, especially considering the high failure rate. Fortunatly, I had saved a copy of the old 2.04 firmware, and we're running from that as best we can. (When our first copy of 2.04 wiped itself out, I took a trip to Imagen and picked up a few extra copies of 2.04. Of course, not everyone is able to do that. Imagen only sent one good copy of 2.1, and I'm not in the mood for another trip.) Is anyone else having this problem? In any case, I suggest that people save their old diskettes in case of emergency, and make sure to keep a written listing of your responses to the "configurator" program handy, so you can re-set-yourself-up when a new disk arrives. (If they're not going to let you back your disks up, at least the machine ought to be able to give you a hardcopy of your entire configuration; after all, it is a printer.) -david -------