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From: thompson@apr.UUCP (The Software Warrior)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Need info on ISI systems
Message-ID: <125@apr.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Sep-85 15:10:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: apr.125
Posted: Tue Sep 24 15:10:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 26-Sep-85 06:21:39 EDT
References: <>
Reply-To: thompson@apr.UUCP (The Software Warrior)
Organization: Advanced Programming Resources, Columbus OH
Lines: 100

Beware !!!

We have had an integrated solutions box for a little over a year. We
have had lots of trouble. Their service has been less than satisfactory.

We have a Q-Bus based 510 ISI Optimum. We have 4 Meg of RAM, 140 Maxtor,
QIC-02 tape backup. We run 4.2BSD.

Since we have had it we/they have replaced :

Disk drive three times.
CPU three times
Tape drive twice, we are awaiting our third.
Disk Controller twice.
Power Supply once
Tape Controller once.
Card Cage once.
At least one memory board.

The system for the longest time would not stay cool. The first card cage
that they sent us only had one fan. This fan not would not keep the
machine cool for very long. My solution was to stick a window fan on the
Optimum with the cover removed. In general it stayed cool, unfortunately
management did not like my solution. Last labor day the single fan
burned out. At the time the window fan was not on the Optimum. That
caused lots of damage to boards. The fan, it turns out was a factory
installed 50 Hertz fan. I am suprised it lasted as long as it did. 

After six months they gave us a new card cage with 2 fans. This allowed
us to run with the cover on the machine.

Eventually when the power supply failed they found out that the fan in
the power supply was also not functional and replaced it.

Now the machine will generally run unless the room gets up near 78. We
can live with this, however I sometimes wonder if the internals are
still running to hot and causing premature failure of components. 

When we got the machine we had 2 65 Meg Maxtors in it. The software
would not support swapping so we had to run entirley out of RAM. That
meant that there could only be one nroff job running on the system at
any one time. They kept telling us that they just had a software bug
that they were going to fix. Eventually we got them to replace the two
drives with one 140 Meg Maxtor which solved the swapping problem.

Then the first 140 Meg maxtor had a head crash. We sent them the
machine again.

Last month the 140 Meg Maxtor died again. Horrible crash, everything
lost. We spent a good 2 weeks down waiting for parts. By the way, we
tried to contact NBI (who bought ISI) for service, but they tell me they
are not capable of doing it yet. 

The CPU died right after we first got the machine. I think that may have
also been heat problems. Then when the fan went out they replaced the
CPU board. The CPU was again replaced at some point because it would not
address the full 4Meg, only 3.75Meg. 

The QIC-02 tape drive has already been replaced twice. First time I
think the damage was done when we had the problem with the fan burning
out. The second time the tape drive progressively got flakier untill we
could no longer use it. They shipped us a new tape drive so we could
back the system up before shipping it off to them for repair (there were
several problems at that time).

Now our tape drive is reading, but not writing. Last week I called to
verify that they had shipped us a new tape drive and they said that
they had shipped it federal express (We ordered it around two weeks
ago).  I called them this week and they said they would put a trace on
it and call me back. Of course they never called back. Today I called
them and their story is that it actually went out UPS Blue. I dont know
if they are trying to buy time or what.

And of course we have never gotten our upgrade kit from them, but I dont
care, as long as the machine will run.

In all we have sent the machine back about 5 times give or take a few.
We have done numerous in house repairs and have waited long amounts of
time for parts. The above is not a complete history of our problems
with ISI and their equipment, but it does give a good feel for the
problems we have had.

Sigh.....

I suspect we have had more problems since we got a fairly early machine,
(our serial number is 35) but they have replaced just about everything
short of the DZ board and the actual case. I like the machine when it
runs because it has good response time and does not have any real bad
software problems but it does give trouble.

						Ed

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