From: segall+@cs.cmu.edu (Edward Segall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: BAD Experiences with APS - Please read!
Date: 20 Dec 92 22:06:43 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.BzKw38.GrH.1
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon



It seems that I am virtually the only person who has had bad
experiences with APS.  And these are not little annoyances (I have had
those, too, but that's not what I'm referring to here).  Rather, APS
has given me some seriously wrong tech support in the past, and has
steadfastly refused to cooperate in a meaningful way (at least not far
enough to solve the problem), or to accept the possibility that they
are doing anything wrong.
 
Before I go any further, let me make it clear that APS is, in many
ways, the best mail order organization that I have run into, and that
their tech support is unusually good. HOWEVER, when faced with
problems they do not know how to solve, they usually refuse to accept
that fact, and instead insist that the customer is at fault.  Since
they are in general very good, this situation only occurs in unusual
circumstances.  Consequently, the customer is left totally without
recourse, while in a difficult situation.
 
EXAMPLE: SCSI problems.  I and others who have communicated with me
have had SCSI problems when hooking up APS external drives (Quantums)
and getting them to boot properly.  In this situation, APS has the
customer run through a suite of activities, including changing
termination, drive ordering, drivers, cables, and testing the driver
with APS Power Tools. If the customer does everything APS says, and
APS Power Tools shows no errors, then APS simply refuses to accept
that there is a problem with their hardware or software.  Yet, months
after I and others have had such problems, APS' documentation referred
to a fix for an "obscure bug" associated with setting SCSI IDs, which
I believe was the culprit in my situation.  So it seems, at least,
that it really was their fault.  This fact does not bother me nearly
as much as their attitude.  Since they convinced me the problem was on
my end, I tried many expensive and time-consuming fixes that ended up
being totally irrelevant.
 
EXAMPLE: Drive errors.  System errors and corrupted files are symtoms
that should cause one to suspect one's disk or driver.  Again, APS
claims that if APS Power Tools doesn't show any errors, then there is
no problem with their h/w or s/w, since Power Tools does "the same
thing as the MacOS or any application".  Guess what, APS?
Silverlining shows that the APS driver experiences errors when run on
an accelerated SE (Novy Image Pro, 25 MHz 68030).  Yes, APS was aware
of the setup.
 
Silverlining's multiple synchronization options allowed me to pick a
driver combination that has eliminated such errors.  APS was WRONG,
and I will never use their driver on non-apple hardware again.
 
EXAMPLE: Intermittent problems.  I had an APS drive that would work
fine most of the time, but fail intermittently in a bad way - garbage
on the screen, buzzing noises, etc.  This only occurred during boot,
and only when the drive was cold (a fact that took me weeks or months
to observe, due to its intermittency).  APS said, again: "if the tests
are ok, then it's your problem".  Well, I decided to do a little
investigating on my own, and opened up the case (remember, this was an
_external_ drive).  I looked around for questionable connections
(since a temperature-related problem suggests a poor connection).
 
Guess what I found: a ROM chip with a bent leg.  It was inserted, but,
being bent at the "knee", that pin was barely touching its contact.  A
clear case of APS being at fault, and a new drive being in order?  Not
at all, according to APS.  In fact, I still can't believe the idiocy
dished out by the APS tech guy I talked to (and I think he was the
supervisor!): He said, first, that if it only happened during boot,
then it couldn't be because of the bent pin, since that would cause a
problem all the time. Second, to support that, he said that there are
lots of ground pins on those ROMS, so that's probably all it was.  Do
you believe this garbage?  When I pointed out (speculatively) that if
the pin was an address pin, it might be a high order bit,
corresponding to an area of memory that isonly addressed at certain
times (say, during boot), so it was not at all farfetched that this
might be the source of my problem, he dismissed that explanation.  Did
he ask me which pin it was, to verify whether it really was a ground
pin?  Not at all.  In fact, what he did was to tell me to ship it
back, and that he would send the replacement drive with stickers on
all the screws, voiding the warranty if I opened the case.  As though
I had done anything to damage the drive!  This solution was
unacceptable, since I had plans to convert it to an internal drive in
the near future.
 
I finally convinced him to let me straighten the pin myself, i.e. so
that the warranty would not be voided if it broke in the process.
When I called him back a couple days later to confirm that my cold
booting problem seemed to have been solved, his only response was,
"I'll be damned."  Well, we can only hope, eh?
 
MORAL: APS is fine if you are using standard hardware, and if you
don't run into any really obscure problems.  Do what they say - I
learned a lot from them.  But if your symptoms are conflicting, or if
APS can't solve the problem, don't be intimidated by their superior
attitude.  Success has gone to their heads to some degree, yet they
don't know as much as they think they do.  So persevere, make sure to
get satisfaction within 30 days of purchase if that's when your
problem crops up, and if you don't, ship the damn thing back and go to
LaCie or somewhere else.  And if you have an accellerator, forget APS
(or at least make sure to install someone else's driver, such as LaCie
Silverlining's)!
 
--Ed
 
 
 
 
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