🚀 go-pugleaf

Pete Santangeli told a tale of woe in trying to get Atari service,
and is collecting other such stories.  This is a "good news" and
"bad news" story.  My 1040ST started botching up disk file I/O whenever
a second disk was introduced from an application.  Example:  While in
1ST Word, if I tried to read/write  from/to a disk other than the
one I had used to invoke 1ST Word, I would get a row of bombs and all
my files trashed out in the bargain.  If I never involved a second disk
(impossible with all the writing I do and drawing with DEGAS ELITE, etc),
the machine worked fine.  I brought it to a local dealer (Legacy of Monterey),
and agreed to pay their fee($28) to run the diagnostics they said were
supplied by Atari.  They got to it in a few days (said it took half an hour), 
and the result 
is the "bad news":  they said that the diagnostics showed that the computer 
was fine, and that I owed them $28.   I finally convinced them that there was a
problem, but the solution they offered was to send it in to Atari, an
option I thought might be a black hole.  Anyway here's the "good news":
I brought it to Fry's in Sunnyvale.  In one hour flat (while I browsed in
their store), they replaced the entire (populated) motherboard, and watched
while I checked out the result.  Total cost was $90, and I got the latest
ROM revision in the process.   I was happy to pay, let Fry's do any dealing 
with Atari about my old board, and be back in business
promptly--I use the machine every day in my work. 
Kudos to Fry's
Ken Nygard