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From: dkchen@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Problems w/ Gateway 386 and Windows
Message-ID: <42900062@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu>
Date: 25 Feb 90 20:47:00 GMT
Lines: 33
Nf-ID: #N:uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu:42900062:000:1653
Nf-From: uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu!dkchen    Feb 25 14:47:00 1990


	Recently I bought a Gateway 386-20. It comes with

		4 Meg 80ns RAM, 
		65 MB 28ms RLL HD divided into 3 logical drives 
		DTC 7287 HD/FD controller w/ disk cache
		ATI 512KB controller + NEC 3D, Pheonix BIOS, 
		Micronics 386/20 mother board w/ 64KB cache.

	My question is, what machine type should I choose when installing
	Windows/386. I tried "Intel InBoard/386" and "Zenith". They all
	worked fine, except with the following problem. From time to time,
	I'll get error messages such as "Drive Not Ready Error Reading 
	Drive D:" or "Cannot Write Drive C:" while the HD led was on but
	the HD wasn't doing any work (I mean, it was very quiet).Then I can 
	choose from "ABORT, RETRY, or IGNORE". And the problem always went away 
	when I chose to RETRY. Sometimes I have to ERTRY more than once to
	get through. This happened even when only ONE program is active,
	but usually it happened when another background job was competing
	HD access with the forground job. This is not quite a severe problem,
	I just want to know if I missed anything? And this feature requires
	me to sit in front of my computer until the job(s) is/are done.
	I noticed the PS/2 model 70 doesn't have such problem (at least 
	when I tried it). However, I also noticed that the HD access for PS/2
	is way too slow compared with my 386. So, did the FAST access time of
	the HD and DTC controller cause the problem?

	The Gateway was not very helpful on this matter. They never call back
	as they promised more than 2 weeks ago (I just have this machine for
	about 3 weeks). The machine itself is fine. May be I should give them
	another call. But I am DISAPPOINTED.

Dean