Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ncar!boulder!sunybcs!rutgers!bellcore!faline!thumper!braun
From: braun@thumper.bellcore.com (David A. Braun)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: SupraDrive and Supra Corp Story
Message-ID: <1057@thumper.bellcore.com>
Date: 22 Apr 88 04:02:47 GMT
Reply-To: braun@thumper.UUCP (David A. Braun)
Organization: Bellcore MRE
Lines: 77

In article <> msl5864@ritcv.UUCP (Michael S. Leibow) writes:
>
>Last summer I bought a 20Mb SupraDrive from Supra Corporation.  I was
>very happy with its operation for the first 3 1/2 months.

I've had mine for a similar amount of time and have had no problems since
I got i working to start with.  Note that I only bought the controller.
I already had several SCSI drives laying around (140MB until I get fired!).

>I started to get frequent read/write errors from DH0:.  I thought it might
>be due to thermal expansion of the platters.  I turned the drive off until
>the next morning.  I reformatted it after making a backup.  I restored the
>backup but still had read/write errors frequently.  After about a week
>of this I called Supra.

Sounds real familliar.  Being a little gutsy I asked if it would void
the warrantee if I openned the box up and measured the supply voltage.
He said no - I did - BAD!  They had shipped me a controller with an
extra 1MB of ram (one of the options I didn't ask for but ..).  This
apparently was sucking the power supply dry.  Especially when I added my
2MB MEGABOARD II ram expansion!  Removing the Supra ram fixed it all.

>
> ...
>
>From the story I have just told, what do you think the problem might be?
>
>	1) Ungrounded pals?  (I still have problems and they are grounded)

Not a bad idea anyway.  CBM did a really lousy job on laying out the
power and grounds on both the mother board and the daughter boards.  There
is a LOT of noise on the expansion port supply lines.  I ran the extra grounds
all the way back to the connector were the supply connects to the mother
board.

>	2) Thermal breakdown (neat words for the damn things too hot)

who? the drive, the SCSI controller or the main box?  By the way, I assume
you have an A1000 since your talking about pal grounds etc.

>	3) Something else wrong with my amiga? (The expansion memory aMega
>		from CLtd. works perfectly).

sounds familliar.  the amiga is probably alright.

>	4) Maybe the guy never replaced the interface card like he said and
>		there is somthing wrong with it.  It may send flakey signals
>		to the drive. Could have caused the random resets with drive
>		number 2?  (not number 1 or 3 though).

give 'em a break.  until you have real evidence - believe him.  Personally
I mark stuff I ship back just to detect this kind of horse puckey.

>	5) I have a curse against me that says computer equipment will work
>		flawlessly until the warantee runs out.  (My 8520's and
>		internal floppy went bad on the 91'st day of my Amigas life.
>		this happened before I ever owned memory or hard drives)

my friend and yours - god murphy.

>
>Oh, by the way,
>	SUPRA has been very nice to me.  They only charged me for the initial
>	repair.  Even if their suggestions may have been wrong, they did
>	replace my drive quickly twice.  (and hopefully a third).
>	I am not complaining about SUPRA and I don't think that their equipment
>	is trashy.  I think I just had bad luck.
>
>-- 
>Michael S. Leibow

Same here - they really try to get things working for you.  You might try
checking the supply voltages.  anything less than 4.8V is definitely suspect.
There is too much noise for any less.  sorry but you'll have to find your
own testpoints.  I don't want to open my box unless I have too.  My living
room carpet generates too much static.

dave braun