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From: du4@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Ted Goldstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: reputable mail order locations
Message-ID: <4268@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 27 Feb 90 21:06:39 GMT
References: <2565@leah.Albany.Edu> <497@althea.UUCP> <25181@ut-emx.UUCP>
Reply-To: du4@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Ted Goldstein)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 54

In article <25181@ut-emx.UUCP> dave@walt.cc.utexas.edu (David McKallip) writes:
>CompuAdd in Austin Texas is another one.  An advantage with them is
>that they have about 90 retail stores in the Eastern half of the US.
>Their retail stores have the same prices as their mail order catalog.
>
>
>Dave McKallip                         My employer doesn't know I exist, so how
>Internet: dave@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu     could I have an opinion?

Although I have heard that CompuAdd does have a pretty good reputation, I 
recently have had a lot of bad luck with them and I thought I would relate
the experience. One of our departments recently bought 9 10Mhz AT clones from 
CompuAdd. 
     The first problem I had concerned installing a LAN adapter in one 
of them. After several unhelpful phone calls to their tech support line
(minimum 25-20 minutes on hold) one tech finnaly admitted that one type of
EGA card they regulary used took more ROM address space than it should and
would conflict with LAN adapters. They at least were willing to replace it 
no charge.
     While working on this machine was when I first noticed the low quality
construction of these computers. Instead of a lithium battery mounted on the
motherboard, it had 4 AA cells taped to the side of the power supply. It also
had a number of jumper wires soldered onto chips pins on the motherboard.
These solder joints were messy, often 'cold' joints that had obviously 
been done by hand by a less than expert solderer.
     Within the first 6 months of ownership, 8 out the 9 machines died with
faulty mother boards. Later several of the power supply fans began making 
LOTS of noise. With some persuading, all of these problems were fixed for 
free, but not without wasting a number hours (total) on hold waiting to 
talk to tech support people.
     Well, despite these problems, this department went ahead and
ordered some hard drives from them. They got a 30 meg drive card, and
a "RLL 60 meg drive kit" with a Miniscribe 3650 drive and WD1004-27
controller. After spending quite a bit of time trying to get these
working, and several phone calls to tech support (20 min on hold
minimum) they finnaly decided that the 60 meg drive was bad, and sent
a replacement. I still could not get it to lew level format, so they
decided the controller card was also bad, and agreed to replace it. I
finally got a good drive and controller and got everything formatted.
I then tried to use Spinrite II to verify my choice of interleave
value. Spinrite reported many surface defects right at the beginning
of the where the FAT was, so I once again called CompuAdd tech support
and settled down for my 20 minutes of muzak on hold (at least it is
toll a free number).  After first trying to convince me that Spinrite
II did not handle RLL drives correctly (it does) they said " oh yeah,
that kit gets errors with SpinRite, don't worry about it". Well I
decided to do some investigation and called and western digital and
Miniscribe who both told me that the Miniscribe 3650 is not certified
for RLL use. Well, I had asked the Compuadd tech that, and he had said
it was. So now we have a sort of working, probably unreliable drive setup
courtesy of CompuAdd. We are now in the process of trying to get them
to rectify the situation.
    So although their prices are good, and their reputation is not bad (yet),
I would recommend staying away from CompuAdd.