From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: Advice needed on Tri-Star 486 DX 50 hz.
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 13:04:02 GMT

In <4DHsRB1w165w@tmchome.UUCP> tchal@tmchome.UUCP (Thomas M. Chalfant) writes:

>lestrade@Ra.MsState.Edu (John Patrick Lestrade) writes:

>> I notice in a recent PC mag that one of the best deals on 486/50 is
>> the Tri-Star system(s).  I have not seen them mentioned in this group
>> (mostly Gateway and Zeos hog the spotlight).  Has anyone had any
>> experience they can relate?
>> 

>I have a friend who purchased a PC from Tri-Star a few years ago.  At
>that time their customer service and support were terrible.  For instance,
>a problem was encountered as soon as the system arrived.  Hours were spent
>on hold just to talk to a service rep.  After one was reached they started
>on a one-piece-at-a-time swap (they send overnight for free, we pay to ship
>the old part back) and nothing worked.  Finally they said the motherboard
>must be on the blitz.  They send a motherboard minus a cpu and memory and
>said swap from the old mb to the new mb.  So one cpu and 36 DRAMs later
>we finally have a working system.  All in all, over two weeks was spent just
>to get the initial system operating.  Not to mention the expense in sending
>back parts that were probably alright to begin with!

>Personally, I own a Northgate and have nothing but good things to say about
>them.  Tri-Star may have improved over the last year -- maybe they deserve
>another chance!  But if it were my money... You get the picture.

I just recently bought a high-end system from TriStar (for the same
reason that the poster notes -- the price was great).  The only
problem I've had with this system (486-50DX, EISA, 16 MB, 4S, 2P,
Diamond Speedstar 1MB, AHA-1740 w/ Maxtor 1.2G, 1.44MB, 1.2MB) is that
when it arrived the serial ports were set so that 2 of them were COM1
and 2 of them were COM2.  Before I realized that, I called tech
support about having some problems with them.  They weren't difficult
to get through to, but didn't seem to expect the person they were
talking to to have a clue about hardware.  I wound up finding the
problem myself.

Anyway, depending on what you are planning on using the system for,
you may want to substitute some of their 'standard' parts.  I'm
planning on running Dell UNIX on mine (someone else who has the Free
Technologies EISA motherboard says that it will run Dell UNIX with no
problems), so I substituted an Adaptec controller for their usual
caching controller.  I also substituted a slower Diamond Speedstar+
for their usual Diamond Stealth, because neither OS2 nor X currently
have good S3 drivers available (X may have them by this time, but
apparently Diamond hasn't started working on OS/2 drivers yet).  

Anyway, I am very pleased with my system and with TriStar's QC
process, which has apparently changed since your experience with them.
One thing I would suggest is that if you are planning on upgrading the
amount of RAM later, go ahead and order with 16MB.  If you order less
than 16MB of memory they ship with 1MB SIMMs, but if you order 16MB
they will ship 4MB SIMMs.  This can save you later from having to
remove SIMMs if you decide to add memory.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.