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From: kjh@pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.tandy,comp.sys.amiga.hardware,comp.sys.zenith,rec.ham-radio
Subject: everex
Message-ID: <23188@usc.edu>
Date: 1 Mar 90 22:08:58 GMT
Sender: news@usc.edu
Followup-To: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Organization: EE-Systems, Univ. of So. Calif., Los Angeles
Lines: 51


		I advise you not to buy Everex products.	

I just recently got a Seagate ST-4096 hard disk which was repackaged by
Everex.  The documentation which came with the disk was incorrect.  The
software which came with the disk has serious bugs.

Following the documentation written by Everex exactly, I was unable to
get the drive to work.  After calling the vendor, and talking to their
technical support people, I learned that the Everex documentation is
wrong.  They give faulty information on how to configure the jumpers on
disk drives.  (The correct information will follow later.)  After
following the instructions from the vendor tech support people, the disk
worked.  According to the vendor, Everex admits that their documentation
is incorrect, but they won't fix it.
Note:	The "drive select" jumpers should be set as follows:
If you have a cable with a twist in it, the DS jumpers on BOTH disks
should be set to the second addressable drive.  For hard disks, this is
drive 2 because addressing starts with DS1; for floppy drives, this is
drive 1 because addressing starts with DS0.  The drive on the end of the
cable with the twist will be the first of the two drives (eg. A:) and
the other drive will be the second of the two drives (eg. B:).
If you have a cable without a twist in it, and a single disk drive, the
DS jumper should be set to the first addressable drive.  For hard disks,
this is DS1; for floppy drives this is DS0.

Using the software provided by Everex led to other working systems in my
computer becoming non-functional.  After calling the vendor, and talking
to their technical support people, I learned that Everex admits that
their software does not work.  The vendor agreed to ship me a copy of
Seagate's software.  I haven't received it yet, but I expect it to work
just fine.
Note:	The specific problem I had was: when using the everex
device driver "evdisk.sys", my 720k B: drive would not function
correctly.  You could put in a disk, do a "dir" command, switch disks,
do another "dir" command, and see the directory of the first disk.  You
could "cd" to directories on the first disk which did not exist on the
second disk which is actually in the drive.  The only (hokey) way out of
this problem was to force a drive read fault, to get the "Abort, Retry,
or Ignore?" message.  This is definitely a bug, and not a feature.
(If the evdisk.sys device driver is not used, then 50M of the 80M disk is
wasted under any version of DOS previous to 4.0.)

Rule 1	Don't buy Everex products.

Rule 2	Specify to vendors that you won't accept Everex products.

Rule 3	If you buy something, and it turns out to be an Everex product,
	see rule 1 and rule 2.  Return it.

Ken Hendrickson N8DGN        kjh@usc.edu        ...!uunet!usc!pollux!kjh