Xref: utzoo comp.sys.att:6084 comp.dcom.modems:3687 unix-pc.uucp:101 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!scooter!neoucom!wtm From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) Newsgroups: comp.sys.att,comp.dcom.modems,unix-pc.uucp Subject: Re: Trailblazer Setup for HDB <--[NO! NO! NO!] for the UNIX PC Summary: Not letting out HDB costs more Message-ID: <1571@neoucom.UUCP> Date: 10 Apr 89 12:02:52 GMT References: <175@orac.pgh.pa.us> <649@icus.islp.ny.us> <290@greek.UUCP> <1117@ditka.UUCP> Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Lines: 63 If my experience is typical, not letting out HDB is costing AT&T more to support the 3B1. I bought one ofthe fire-sale 3B1's back in 1987. Here is the hardware and O/S configuration: 3B1 2 meg main memory on the CPU board (P3..P5) 67 meg miniscribe winchester rel 3.51 development set When I got the machine, was disappointed that the machine would not run for more than a day or two without crashing. Usually, the crash didn't even result in any sort of panic message or entry in unix.log; just dead. Only thing working was the mouse pointer could still be moved around on the screen. I complained vociferously to the hotline service, which I must admit tried much harder than many other vendors to be helpful. It was difficult to get "the ticket escalated" beyond the first tier of people at the hotline, however. After quite a bit of finger pointing, I removed every stitch of my own software from the system and let it run. The crashes continued. They accused my Hayes modem, which I was using because I suspected the on board modem (OBM) was problematic. I removed the Hayes modem from tty000 and used only th OBM. Still more crashing. With 2 months of my 90 day warranty up, AT&T finally agreed that the uucp implementation must be at fault. A person at the hotline agreed to uucp me a new copy of uucico, which was interesting, since that was the trouble-maker software to start with. The new uucico finally arrived, and I mv'ed it over to proper directory. More crashes. With only a couple of weeks left in the 90 days AT&T was convinced that the motherboard had to be the culprit, so they sent a person out with a new motherboard. It was their $$, so I figured, "what the heck". The new motherboard worked for about a week, then the crashes showed up again. I thought they had it with the new board. About a month after my warranty was up, a an archive file mysteriously showed up in my uucppublic directory. Upon investigation, it turned out to be the HDB package. I decided not to ask questions about where it came from. I unpacked it, and have been using it over a year. The crashes stopped completely the day I installed the HDB. Now it might just be coincidence, but I'm convinced that the uucp that comes with the version 3.51 O/S release is a complete piece of junk. HDB running on my Unix PC has been supporting heavy uucp traffic with both the OBM and a trailblazer without incident. I have no idea if my experience is typical, but if it is, if I were the hotline, I'd find out where that HDB package is, and make sure it is on that disk they're about to send out to fix the time zone bug :-). (I'm not holding my breath!) The hotline could then make the HDB basic networking utilities the one and only supported uucp for all machines. Surely supporting multiple uucp incarnations must be more expensive than one? Bill wtm@impulse.UUCP