HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: cmk@athena.mit.edu (Charles M Kozierok)
Subject: Re: Is Gateway a publicly held company? I think I'll short some stock...
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 22:26:53 GMT

In article <rash.721707871@access.digex.com> rash@access.digex.com (Wayne Rash) writes:
>chow@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Christopher Chow) writes:
>
>>In article <TIM.92Nov9180806@coors.boxhill.com> tim@boxhill.com (Timothy Jones) writes:
>>>I'm totally fed up.  I'm a little new to the PC market (I work mostly with
>>>Suns and other UNIX workstations) and am *appalled* by the customer service I
>>>have received from Gateway.  I wonder if all the PC mail order houses treat
>>>their customers this poorly...  I guess a Sun salesperson who sells machines
>>>costing $20K a piece cares a little more about the individual customer.
>>>
>
>>[Yet another Gateway horror story deleted]
>
>>Amazing that people on the net still order from Gateway. This summer, 
>>there were a whole slew of articles regarding problems with Gateway. True,
>>they were written up as having the best reliability, etc, by PC Magazine
>>this summer, but I had thought the general net.consensus reached mid-summer
>>was that Gateway was growing too fast for their management ability, and that
>>published article, being at least a couple of months old at the time
>>of publication, was already inaccurate.
>
>>I'd figure that after the fiascos with the floating point math and telepath
>>modems, as well as signs of inability to deal with growth (late machine
>>deliveries, apparently some machines not burnt-in shipping to customers,
>>absurdly long wait times on support) that demand would slacken off.
>>BTW, people recently speculated that some Gateways delivered with video
>>cards not fully inserted were perhaps due to UPS mishandling. How likely
>>is this? I've mailed a number of systems through UPS, and have never 
>>had such a problem. Seems to me that this may be more indicative of an
>>overburdened assembly line combined with a lack of burn in rather than
>>UPS mishandling.
>
>>-- 
>>Christopher Chow
>>---------------------------   Phone:          518-426-0687
>>1 Notre Dame Drive - Rm 317   Internet:       chow@theory.tc.cornell.edu
>>Albany, NY 12208-3413         America Online: Chris Chow
>
>Well, I have to admit that I rarely have UPS to blame for loose video
>cards.  Normally they do a more thorough job than that.  Normally they
>crush to computer to less than half its normal height in at least one
>dimension.  Then they leave it in the rain, soak it with solvent, or
>something similar.  Today I received a former SCSI card in the mail via
>UPS.  It's now a strange collection of little skinny pieces of foil and
>fiberglass shards.
>
>Good ol' UPS.  they never saw a computer they couldn't flatten.

i recently purchased a new system from gateway. they actually shipped
it 10 days early! it is fine so far, and it came ok.

just thought i should share a bit of the other side.

--
charles
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
From: k36853p@saha.hut.fi (Tapani Otala)
Subject: Problem using SVGA with HGC
Summary: SVGA and HGC to co-operate
Keywords: SVGA,HGC,co-operation
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 14:55:52 GMT


I have both a Tseng Labs ET4000-based SVGA and a Hercules
Graphics Card clone installed in my machine.  The problem
is, the SVGA appears to insist on handling the monochrome
mode (BIOS mode #7) itself, thus blocking the use of the
existing HGC.  This can be seen as messed up display in
the monochrome mode as garbage appears on both monitors
due to the fact that the cards are competing over the same
turf.  The HGC is configured to HALF mode, i.e. it doesn't
use the upper 32K of its address space - otherwise it would
mess up the color text modes on the SVGA.

The documentation for the SVGA says it automatically detects
attempts to use the monochrome modes and switches accordingly.
Fine, but I definitely do not want it to do that when I have
a real HGC hooked to a separate monitor at my disposal.

Now, is there some magic switch I can flip in the SVGA to tell
it NOT to mess with the monochrome mode?  I found an entry
in Ralf Brown's interrupt list that describes a function which
can be used to alter the card/monitor combination info.
I tried it, to no avail.  Also, fiddling with the VMODE (or
was it DMODE) program that came with the SVGA proved futile
at best.  Ideas, anyone?


  --------------------------------------------------------------------
    -- Tapani.Otala@hut.fi ---- I feel like Exxon. You spill once, -----
      -- SilentOne on IRC ------- and you pay for the rest of your life --
        ------------------------------------- Al Bundy ---------------------
From: ahummel@ems.cdc.com (H. Austin Hummel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Gateway 2000 and ATI Technologies - The sc
Date: 19 Nov 92 14:26:43 GMT
Reply-To: you@ems.cdc.com
Organization: Empros Systems International, a division of CDC

In article <1992Nov18.091212.23898@walter.cray.com>, dpp@cray.com (David Peterschmidt) writes:
|> In article 92Nov17181005@onion.cmu.edu, gerry@cmu.edu (Gerry Roston) writes:
|> >Here's what I have been able to piece together:
|> >
|> >First the bad news:
|> >
|> >Gateway 2000 has been shipping their computers with the ATI Ultra Pro
|> >(local bus) with the ATI68830 RAMDAC and 1 MB VRAM.  This RAMDAC can
|> >not produce 1280x1024 graphics.
|> >
|> >Now the good news:
|> >
|> >[From ATI Technologies, (416) 756-0718, Brett at x269]:
|> >The ATI68830 RAMDAC can not handle 2 MB of VRAM.  For the higher
|> >resolutions, you need the ATI68875 RAMDAC.  This will be available
|> >from ATI for user upgrade starting in December.  The price is not yet
|> >set, but it shouldn't exceed $100 US.  The 1 MB VRAM upgrade is
|> >available now for $99 US.  Expect to pay an additional $10 US for
|> >shipping and handling.
|> >
|> >[From Gateway 2000, (800) 523-2000, Lane Johnson]:
|> >Next week, Gateway will start shipping the ATI68875 RAMDAC in the
|> >graphics card.  This will be the standard item and pricing is not
|> >expected to change.
|> 
|> 
|> Is Gateway going to offer an upgrade to those of us who have the 68830
|> RAMDAC model?  After all, this thing was advertised as a full-blown
|> ATI Graphics Ultra Pro, which is able to do 1280x1024 and handle 2 megs
|> of VRAM.

Well if you sit there waiting for them to contact you, don't hold your
breath. If you are going to use that resolution, and it does not work
call Tech Support for the fix!!
From: engstrom@hillkomm.dk (Flemming Engstrom)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Conner cp3360 diskinfo wanted
Date: 17 Nov 92 09:42:01 GMT
Organization: Hilleroed Kommune

Does anybody have info about a Conner Cp3360 360 Mb SCSI-hdd?

The distrbutor was not able to deliver any docs at all.

I need info about all strappings on the diskdrive.

thx
engstrom@hillkomm.dk
From: weberj@dia.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (Weber)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: wd 2200 + maxtor 7080a
Date: 16 Nov 92 15:23:43 GMT
Article-I.D.: ifi.1992Nov16.152343.16587
Organization: Informatik, Uni Stuttgart, W.Germany
Originator: weberj@dia

Some days ago I bought a WD 2200 caviar as second drive
to my MAXTOR 7080A.
I installed the MAXTOR as slave and the WD as master.

The jumper settings are:

WD: MA = ON

MAXTOR: J19 = ON
        J20 = OFF

(On = "with hat")
The WD was delivered without a jumper but luckily the maxtor
has J20 = ON as single drive, so I could use this jumper.

BTW the maxtor has an average seek of about 15 ms and 780K data
transfer rate. The numbers for the WD are 12.5 and about 1M.
(I have a 386-40).

Greetings Juergen

-- 

Juergen G. Weber
Student am Institut fuer Informatik
Universitaet Stuttgart - Germany
From: psrk_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Peter Sierk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: More MicroLab bashing
Date: 16 Nov 92 21:33:44 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York


     With all of this bashing of MicroLab going on, I just thought
I would take the time to relate my story.
	About 3 months ago, I ordered a lot of equipment from
MicroLab since I was building a system around a motherboard I 
already had.  Well, I was told that everything was in stock, and
would be shipped out the following day.
	After about 2 weeks without receiving anything or hearing
anything from them, I called back.  Evidentally, they did not have
the Seagate 130 Meg drive I ordered, and so they hadn't shipped 
anything.  They told me that they did have a 130 Meg Maxtor drive
in stock, so they could send that with the rest of the equipment.
I agreed to that, so they said they would ship it out the next day.
By this time, it was getting close to time for classes to start, so
I asked them to ship it to my college address.  That was supposed
to be okay, but I got a call the next day that they could not ship
it there since the address was different from the credit card I was
ordering with.
	I then decided to have it shipped to my regular address.  I
called the next day to see if things had been shipped.  By this time,
the guy who I originally ordered from had quit, so I got a different
employee every time.  This time when I called I got someone who told
me that no, things were still on backorder.  I told him that things
were supposed to have been shipped that day.  Then he said that, oops
he made a mistake, and things really were shipped.  The next day I
called again and got someone else who told me everything was shipped.
By this point I had received my some equipment, and I noticed that
my IDE controller was not listed on the packing order.  I asked this 
person about this, and was told that the controller would be shipped
with the hard drive.
	After a couple of days I got ahold of the only person who was
actually helpful in the matter, and learned some interesting things.
One, employees work on commission from sales, and since the person I
ordered from had quit, no one else wanted to waste time with a 
customer who was not earning them any money, so they would just lie
to me to get me to hang up.  Second, that IDE controller was never
ordered, even though I did specifically order it when I called them
the first time.  Third, the hard drive still wasn't shipped anyway.
I went through an annoying process of getting them to send the 
remaining equipment to my college address (they were now willing to
do this since most of the equipment had already been sent to my 
home address).  This was done while I was rather vehemently expressing
my disgust to both this employee and the manager.  A few days later
my parents received the drive and controller at my home.
	Now I feel much better after getting that off my chest.  At
least everything they shipped me seems to work (though the motherboard
I built it around is screwy).  Sigh.

					Peter Sierk
(Boy it feels good bashing them.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
From: dyer@rtsg.mot.com (Bill Dyer)
Subject: Re: Unisys 386 Memory Question
Organization: Motorola Inc., Cellular Infrastructure Group
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 22:19:20 GMT

In article <1992Nov20.152829.7315@usafa.af.mil> mccormac@pooh.usafa.af.mil writes:
>   Does anyone out there know how to add memory to a Unisys 386-16 computer?  The 
>government bought the systems with a whopping 2 MB of RAM which is soldered to the
>motherboard.  No SIMM sockets in sight, only an odd 32-bit card slot (slot 8) with
>dire warnings not to plug the 'Memory Expansion Board' into any other slot.
>   Well, I would like to run Linux, other people I work with are starting to use
>Windows 3.1 and Word for Windows, so the 2 MB of RAM just isn't cutting it any
>more.  We would like to expand the systems, but Unisys want around $800 for a 4 MB
>memory card.
>    Any suggestions on how we could do better would be greatly appreciated.
 
Yeah, toss the stupid thing.  Seriously, I had one of these things (my dad
used to work for Unisys and got me a great deal) and had nothing but trouble
trying to upgrade it.  The BIOS is very non-standard and would not accept 
any modern VGA card.  The memory configuration is very non-standard as well.
For $800 you could buy a new 386-40 motherboard and 4 meg of RAM  and
have money to spare. Thats what I did.  Warning, do not get any ideas of putting
that new motherboard into your existing case.  The case is a non-standard
size and the power supply has a non-standard connector to the mother
board. But, you can get a case with the money you had left over from above
and still have part of your $800 left.

You may be able to use the hard drive and the video card, but I didn't
try it, I upgraded those as well.   Basically you are stuck because Unisys
pulled a boneheaded move when they made these machines.  They were great
in their time, but now they are painfully out of date and not easy to 
upgrade.  If you decide to try and upgrade the thing, feel free to ask
any questions, I played around for months trying to upgrade the machine
before giving up so I may be able to help you somewhat.

Oh, one more thing, I did add memory to the Unisys machine by using a 
memory expansion card.  You can get these things for about $10-$150.
They plug into a standard 16 bit ISA slot and take anywhere from 2-16
meg or ram.  I had one with 4 meg.  This gave my machine 5 meg total.
It worked OK, but Windows was SLOW.  This is a viable option if you 
just want to run Windows and don't care if it is particularly slow.
You won't like it though, Windows is barely tolerable on my 386-40.

Good luck,

Bill Dyer

-- 
________________________________________________________________________
|  I'll murder you with love,        |Bill Dyer  (708) 632-7081        |
|  The killings in the kiss, it's in | dyer@rtsg.mot.com  (work)       |
|  the kiss.    -Nails               | or p00112@mail.psi.net (home)   |
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
From: jrsellec@socs.uts.edu.au (j r selleck)
Subject: Re: 586 is used in machines and sold commercially
Organization: Computing Sciences, Uni of Technology, Sydney.
Date: 17 Nov 92 11:27:34 GMT

In the article (see below) the author is nt sure about 100MHz or 100 MIPS internally.

from what I have gathered it is 100 MIPS internally (greater than)
The reasons I would say this is that an article in Australian Personal Computers said that the Intel Engineers where still 'cooking' them at 66 MHz.

Someone elses' article on here said that the 586 was going to perform 2 instructions per cycle.

If anyone 'KNOWS' different I would like to hear from them

James Selleck

************** other article follows ******************  <-- someone else's copyright


kellmeye@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (kellmeyer steven l) writes:

>linstee@dutecaj.et.tudelft.nl (Erik van Linstee) writes:


>>I just talked to a guy who claimed this. He also said it is
>>a 64-bit risc-like processor. In fact 64-bit machines have been
>>around for as much as 9 years now.

>PC Magazine had a couple articles on it in the last 3 months.  Apparently
>it's a superscalar CISC chip, i.e. capable of performing more than one
>instruction per clock cycle.  First superscalar CISC ever made, according
>to the article (thus the possible confusion with superscalar RISC).  
>64 bit data bus, 32 bit internally running at > 100 Mhz  (or > 100 MIPS,
>I don't remember which - sorry :)  16Kb internal cache, 8KB for each of
>the twin 32-bit portions of the 64-bit data bus.  The FPU has been
>rewritten to be quite a bit faster than the FPU in the 486. 

>It's not released for production yet, but Compaq is putting together a
>new motherboard to take advantage of the 586 design.  IBM claims they
>have a machine whose design will already take advantage of the 586, with
>a few minor modifications.

>>See what you think about it. If you have such a 586 machine
>>or know one who does, let me know.

>It's not exactly a 64 bit chip, it appears to be a VERY hyper 32-bit chip.
>I don't know if there is a 586 instruction set as such.

>>Erik

>Steve Kellmeyer
>>-- 
>>Erik van Linstee   |   Delft University of Technology   |   I'll be back ... 
>>----
>>   We are god, 'cause only we can create the idea of his existence
>>   in our holy brains...  (Yello)
>-- 

>Steve Kellmeyer 
>kellmeye@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
--
jrsellec@syzygy.socs.uts.edu.au        James Selleck

  "There are, in fact, two things: science and opinion;
    the former begets knowlegde, the latter ignorance." - Hippocrates
From: hm@opus40.ix.de (Harald Milz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: How to tell SIMM speed (ns)?
Date: 16 Nov 92 17:36:53 GMT
Organization: iX-Redaktion


In article <1992Nov13.041552.1270@williams.edu>, Josh Thayer <Joshua.L.Thayer@williams.edu> writes:
|> 
|> Probably a stupid question, but I don't know: I need to tell what the
|> speed rating is on a pair of SIMMs I took out of a dead machine. Is the
|> fact that their serial number ends in a "-7" mean that they're 70ns?
|> 
|> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
|> --------------
|> Joshua Thayer                            |  I use antlers in all of my
|> decorating.
|> Joshua.L.Thayer@williams.edu		|
yes.
-- 
|Dipl.-Ing. Harald Milz                   |    EMail:		hm@ix.de |
|iX - Multiuser Multitasking Magazin      |    FAX:    +49 511 547 47 33 |
|D-3000 Hannover 61, Helstorfer Str. 7    |    Tel.:   +49 511 547 47 66 |
None of the above statements are intended to be coincident with opinions
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware,comp.os.msdos.misc
From: wo@rio70.snibln.de (Wolfgang Kalthoff)
Subject: Re: IDE And SCSI with a Twist
Organization: Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, Berlin, Germany
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 11:02:26 GMT

rice@ttd.teradyne.com writes:

>In article <wo.721679811@rio70>, wo@rio70.snibln.de (Wolfgang Kalthoff) writes:
>> storm@cs.mcgill.ca (Marc WANDSCHNEIDER) writes:
>> 
>>>I am considering mixing a SCSI drive in with my IDE drive sometime in the
>>>near future.  However, I want to make sure that the 340MB IDE is still the
>>>drive that boots the system, and ends up as the C: drive.
>>>Can I add a SCSI Controller, tack a 200MB SCSI drive onto it, and still keep
>>>the IDE drive as the primary one.


>>>How would one go about entering that into the BIOS...?  (I seem to recall that
>>>SCSI drives aren't entered into the BIOS or something like that !)
>> 
>> Simply plug in the controller and the drive. That's all!!
>> 

>Not quite so easy as that.. If you want the SCSI drive to be a secondary
>drive, you have to disable the bios on the SCSI controller. (At least in the

That's wrong.
You have to disable the bios, if you 
1) have no drive but tape, CDRom or .. attached  or
2) have a 2nd, 3rd .. SCSI controller

>adaptec), then load a couple of device drivers  ASPI4DOS and another that

It's a good idea to have ASPI4DOS as the first line in config.sys, but it works
without. 

>I forget (I'm at home and my documentation is at the office). You don't have
>to put anything in the BIOS. But it does work fine. 

>Make sure that when you purchase the SCSI controller, you get the version that
>comes with the device drivers (Adaptec kits them separately, so that the
>controller can be purchased with or without drivers).


>>>I've been looking at the UltraStor 14F, but there is also the possibility
>>>of picking up an Adaptec.

>Pick up the Adaptec 1542B-K (the -k is the "kit" with the device driver
>software). It's pretty much the 'standard'.
--
Wolfgang Kalthoff    | S iemens             | EUnet: kalthoff.bln@sni.de
Gustav-Meyer-Allee 1 | N ixdorf             | USA  : kalthoff.bln@sni-usa.com
D-1000 Berlin 65     | I nformation Systems | Tel: +49-30-4673 2951 Fax: 2915
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: lodzins@pilot.njin.net (Dean Lodzinski)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Blinking Screen - Help!!!
Keywords: Blinking,Screen,Help,Fix
Date: 19 Nov 92 17:10:11 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


I swapped my 386/33 motherboard from a small desktop case to a bigger
desktop case.  I kept all my cards, didn't add anything new.  The
power supply is 200 watts in new case as was in the old.  Essentially,
except for the case, everything is the same.  What is happening to me
now is that I get a blinking screen.  If I do a dir after I boot up my
who screen blinks.  Has anyone heard of this or have a solution or
anything?  I have run out of ideas.  Please Email me with any
suggestions/solutions.  Thanks.
    Dean
-- 
=======================================================================
Dean Lodzinski         lodzins@pilot.njin.net, DLodzinski@aol.com,
47 Mercury Circle      Dean.Lodzinski@n633.f107.z1.fidonet.org,
South Amboy, NJ        D.LODZINSKI on GEnie or Dean Lodzinski on
08879-2464  USA        Hologram Inc., FNET Node 133, at 908/727-1914
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
From: nheu@wimsey.bc.ca (Norman Heu)
Subject: EMM386.EXE Slows Down HD
Organization: BC News and Mail
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 16:06:33 GMT

Help!  My new WD Caviar 170mb hard drive is great, but my data
tranfer rates drop from ~1121k/s to ~420k/s when I have
EMM386.EXE in my config.sys.  Can anyone tell me why and what I
can do to keep the higher disk rate (while running EMM386.EXE)?

Running out and buying new memory management software is not a
solution.

Hardware - OPTI496 M/B [386-25DX, no cache], 4MB ram
             [AMI BIOS July/91]
           WD Caviar 2170 [170mb HD, 32K cache]

Software - DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1

I'm using PCTools and Norton sysinfo to get my results.

I've tried 2 different IDE controllers and get the same results.

Video/bios shadowing is on.  Turning bios shadowing off and
leaving EMM386.EXE out of the config.sys gives ~380k/s DTR.

Any and all replies would be much appreciated.
	-Norm

-- 

  Norman Heu   nheu@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca -or- nheu@van-bc.wimsey.com
               [Vancouver, BC, Canada]
From: dema@astrax.north.de (Detlef Marxsen)
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 20:15:11 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: How to install second HD
Message-ID: <9211172015adema@astrax.north.de>
Organization: Organi...what?

Hello *,

I'm about to install a second harddisk into my 486-box.
The present drive is a Conner CP 30084 (80 MB).
The drive I want to add is a Kyocera KC-40GA.
I know how to configure the KC-40GA as a slave drive.
But what have I to change at the CP 30084 to operate as a master drive ?

Thanks for any advice.
Please reply by E-Mail.

Regards,

Detlef.

+------------------------------------------------ //||\\  _______
| Detlef Marxsen    Voice: +49-4221-39122 AnsMa.  |    o O_______O       *
| 53 02 N 08 42 E   E-Mail: dema@astrax.north.de  | @ ,_\    |
+------------------------------------------------ |____)    /|\
From: vrv@cimage.com (Victor Volkman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: cmos
Date: 18 Nov 92 13:40:58 GMT
Article-I.D.: cimage.1992Nov18.134058.11272
Organization: Cimage Corp, Ann Arbor, MI
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4


>CMOS seems like it is a mysterious undocumented piece of my computer.  I even
>went to the book store and couldn't find one book about CMOS.  If there is 
>any documentation about CMOS it seems to only cover the first menu option
>"STANDARD CMOS SETTINGS"

Actually, it is not too mysterious... If you know where to look.  You
will find the answers in the set of books written by Phoenix (yes,
the makers of the BIOS clone).  These books are available at better
bookstores (such as Border's).  I don't have it in front of me,
but the title is something like "BIOS for Personal Computers".  The
book on "ABIOS" focuses on the PS/2 (MCA) BIOS while the other book is
about AT-bus BIOS.

However, if you want information about more exotic chipset-specific
registers, as I think you do (Western Digital, etc) you must look
to the manufacturer.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware