Bad Drives

From: Lawrence Walker <lgwalker_at_mts.net>
Date: Fri Aug 23 13:04:00 2002

 Isn't bad drives Kaypros biggest shortcoming ?
 I have a Kaypro II and a Kaypro 2X Neither one is functioning because of
drive faults.

 My greatest frustration tho are the Atari ST drives. I remember back in the
early 90s having to leave my ST idle for about 6 months because I couldn't
afford the Atari dealers overpriced replacement. Otherwise the ST is still one
of my favorite machines. Right now I have about 4, and several part machines.
 I am presently reduced to using an external drive since none of the internal
drives are functioning. I wonder if Sam Tramiel did a similar outsourcing as
the Kaypro 10, buying production rejects.

Lawrence

>
> I was working for a rat-hole computer store when the Kaypro 10s debuted
> - Kaypro made a deal with Lal Tandon to buy 10MB drives made (IIRC) in
> Mother India - at any rate the 10s of that vintage had about an 80% DOA
> rate.
>
> You could (and I did, on numerous occasions) show up in the reception
> area of Kaypro in San Diego lugging a 10, and someone would bring you out
> a new one on a box, that had been burned-in... no questions asked, just
> "Sorry for the inconveience, here's a new one under warranty."
>
> They had a big tent set up in the parking lot complete with mobile
> air conditioners to handle all the re-work. It was truly a nightmare.
>
> These were from the batch where you could pay extra to have your unit
> 'personalized': it was supposed to be a mark of distinction that you had
> an expensive portable computer with your name tastefully inlaid. What
> happened in practice was the last guy on the production line took one of
> those vibrating-carbide-stylus things and scrawled whatever was on the
> invoice all over the back plate - never mind the paint or the
> silk-screening.... it's funny, now...
>
>
> AND - my 1988 Mac SE30 came with a CMS internal HD, complete with a nice
> copy of nVir - courtesy of a disgruntled quality-control tech at CMS. It
> would replicate itself at intervals and grab the speaker and say "Don't
> Panic" in that early MacInTalk voice. Then at some point it would say
> "Now Panic!" and trash your HD. Pretty tame as virii go today, back then
> the store I bought it from had to shut down for two days while they
> disinfected every machine and disk in the joint. Mine included. And I
> just recently found the original invoice for that machine, which looks
> down on me now from the shelf where it sits in snug reirement; it used to
> run my music studio.
>
> Cheers
>
> John
>


lgwalker_at_mts.net
bigwalk_ca_at_yahoo.com
Received on Fri Aug 23 2002 - 13:04:00 BST