🚀 go-pugleaf

We originally purchased the Everex 3000A with the hopes of running SCO XENIX.
Needless to say, the ads and the sales people all said that the machine would
run. As we found out in the long run, nobody at Everex really tested the machine
for long term use with XENIX, or so it seems.

The symptoms are that you get memory corruption (ie: lots of core dumps) after
the machine has been up a day or two. We rebuilt the filesystems several times
before abandoning the machine for UNIX related use. If you rebooted a couple of
times a day, the machine would work just fine. If you went out of town and 
left the machine up, you could pretty well be assured that the machine would
be very sick when you got back.

The problem seems to be related to the 64K cache. We pulled out all the cards
and the disk drive, reinstalled them in the new 33MHz DTK motherboard and have
been up and running ever since. No more corruption problems, no core dumps, etc.
We asked Club AT. They claimed to know nothing of the problem. Everex refused
to talk to us since they only deal with resellers like Club AT. We only found
out recently that other people were having the same problems.

Moral of the story: try before you commit to buying.

On another note, we asked Everex for technical help with a cartridge tape driver
that we were writing for their 125MB tape drive. We purchased the tech ref 
manual for $50, but the tech ref manual and support people at Everex could give
us no info regarding interrupts and DMA. I later spoke with an Everex marketing
person who was here in the Chicago area to rep their products. He said that they
don't have time to spend (ie: waste) helping developers. I guess that they don't
see indirect sales as being important. So, we dropped support for Everex tape
drives.

We then called up Wangtek. They sent out full technical and driver docs free
of charge along with having an engineer call us and offer help with the driver!

Moral of the story: avoid Everex.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bartek Associates, Inc.       Comprehensive Computer Consulting Services
1020 Ponderosa                USENET: uunet!bartek1!norm, norm@bartek1.uu.net
Barrington, IL 60010-5800     PHONE:  +1 708 358 1007   FAX: +1 708 358 7241