🚀 go-pugleaf

Greetings,

Today, another 140MB internal HD crashed.  That makes for a total of three such
drives in the past two weeks.  Two of the drives are mfg'd by Rodime for
Jasmine, the third drive is a Rodime direct sell.  The two Jasmine drive serial
#s are:  D000280 and the other is D000285.  Coincidence?  Hmm.

Call Jasmine you say?  I've tried. And tried.  And tried.   Typical scenario:
1) Call Jasmine.
2) Listen to automatic answering dealy - enter code for tech support.
3) Hear the msg telling me all lines are busy, and "don't worry, be happy!" my
call will be answered in the order it was rcd, etc.  You know the drill...
4) Stay on hold for in excess of 45 minutes w/o speaker phone.
5) Click!  AHA!  A live human bean! "Customer Service Operator, all lines are
busy, may I take a message?".  GEEEeeeezzz!  These people have more nerve than
a toothache.  Yes, I'll leave a scathing message, thank you!  This has gone on
for two days now.

Meanwhile, Rodime promises to call back real soon now.  I haven't pursued them
as vigorously.

To be fair: From month #1 that Jasmine started business, I've had good luck
with their drives.  That is to say, though, I've never needed tech support
before.  If this is "typical", I'd like to know about it before I buy another
Jasmine product.  Any thoughts on this?  Good and bad experiences welcome -
mention mfgr and "flavor" of experience with them - outstanding, good, fair,
wretched, etc.  While none of the drives were in <MY> machine, they were in my
company's machines, which I must repair.  Note: I have an external Jasmine
140MB - works great (so far!). 

Also, it seems to me that recently I read a little tidbit in MacUser or
MacWorld (or was it MacWeek or ...?!) that some former Jasmine employees had
brought suit against Jasmine - charging that Jasmine had knowingly sold
defective drives, etc.  Not that I suspect that I have any of the same drives
(but then again...), but it's revealing of their character, if true.  Did
anyone else read this?  Remember where?  Have you heard any outcome of the
suit?  I suspect it'll be "settled out of court".

Most importantly, I wanted to make others aware that there may be a problem
here.  If you have a failed internal Jasmine drive, what was your experience in
dealing w/ Jasmine?  Do you have the serial # handy?  Is it "close" to the two
drives listed above?  I can't really list the serial number of the third Rodime
drive in that it doesn't use the same "syntax" as Jasmine does.  The SMALL bar
code tag says:

IDS-0140-02  {Model type?}
IFT890207020 {Serial# - incl. date of mfgr??}

Any comments on this issue would be appreciated.  For fastest response from me,
e-mail would be preferred, though I do check the net fairly often.

---

ALSO: there is a Seagate 40MB internal hd failure for many drives shipped with
Apple Mac II's, and possibly other models, the serial number range for the
defective Seagates is: 335507 to 1023016  (wowwee!  Hope those weren't
increments of "1" at a time, Seagate!!).  We have one of these drives where I
work, and another (unknown) quantity of them (at least one!) at another
Bellcore location.  As far as I know, these are exclusively 40MB drives.

There <IS> a "field fix" for these drives.  Apple is kindly replacing the
drives that fall into the range (I believe whether they've failed or not, but
don't quote me on that!). E-mail me if you have Seagate 40MB drive in this
range, I'll tell you the "fix" and/or phone number for Apple  - how to replace,
etc.

---

BTW: NONE of the owners of ANY of the failed drives had any form of back up!
It's been a fun two weeks for Mac service at Bellcore...

Thanks for your help & sympathy!

-Pete Ferris

pff@thumper.bellcore.com