Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!umd5!trantor.umd.edu!louie
From: louie@trantor.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Where's the Amy 1000 Service??
Message-ID: <2528@umd5.umd.edu>
Date: 3 Apr 88 16:34:36 GMT
References: <2753@crash.cts.com> <240@ssbell.UUCP>
Sender: ris@umd5.umd.edu
Reply-To: louie@trantor.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 50

In article <240@ssbell.UUCP> chris@ssbell.UUCP (0000-Chris Olson) writes:
>...don't feel bad.  I've been trying to chase down my hard
>drive and controller from C Ltd. for about 4 weeks now.
>They got the hard drive returned but are having a devil of a
>time sending me the controller. 

Danger - flames and horror stories ahead.

Almost a year ago, when I still had my A1000 system, I bought a C Ltd.
disk system.  I worked really great for, oh, 4 days or so until the
drive crapped out.

Ship it back.

Wait.  Wait some more.  Hmm.. while I'm waiting, maybe I'll try to hack up
some device driver code.  Lets see how this autoconfig stuff works.. Plug
the C Ltd SCSI host adaptor back into the machine..  Gee, A1000 won't boot
anymore.

Ship it back.

Wait.  Wait some more.  Call (long distance, many times).  Finally, pissed and
moaned my way to a higher-up who Fed-Ex a new system to me. 

It's dead too.

Screw this - Ship the whole thing back to the mail order place, and I actually
got them to refund all my money.  Total elapsed wasted time - about 4 months.

Since then, I decided the right way to do things is A1000->A2000 upgrade, a
A2090 hard diskcontroller, and ST251 disk.  Ths 2090/ST251 combination is
*really* wonderfull, and I'm sure the 2090's DMA has a lot to do with that.
I was real disapointed that the C Ltd host adaptor was interrupt driven only
with no DMA.  It really shows.

By the way, I've got real good things to say about C/A Wholesale Supply.  After
I related my horror story to them and asked for a refund, they credited my
VISA card with no hassle.  Good folks.

As you might expect, I'm not pleased the the C Ltd hardware, and will not
buy any of their stuff in the future.  A friend of mine who also bought a
C. Ltd disk system also had his crap out.  That doesn't bode well.  Maybe
things have improved since my experience, but I'm not going to chance it.

Oh, just to prevent any confusion, C Ltd is *not* Commodore;  they are a
third party peripheral manufacturer. 


Louis A. Mamakos  WA3YMH    Internet: louie@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU
University of Maryland, Computer Science Center - Systems Programming