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PERVISIT.TXT
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1988-03-13
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PERVISIT.TXT
Sparta PCBoard
Hard Drive Conference
PERSTOR Conference
This text file is general notes from the visit to Perstor
Systems, Inc., on March 1, 1988.
Purpose of visit:
The main purpose of the visit to Perstor Systems, Inc., was to
help establish a product support bulletin board. Since I have
extensive experience in setting up a bbs, Perstor indicated a
desire to utilize this experience and review my recommendations
about how a fulltime BBS might be used to provide a 24 hour a day
forum for the exchange of information and provision of support
for the Perstor line of PC controllers and other products.
Itinerary:
2-26-88 - Leave Newark, Arrive in Phoenix around 6:30PM MST
2-27-88 - Install PCBoard 12.1/D BBS Software
2-28-88 - Install Menus, Bulletins, Organize Directory Structure,
Establish support conferences, etc.
2-29-88 - Return to the cold country in New Jersey.
Detailed Trip Report:
Upon arrival at the Phoenix International Airport, I was greeted
by some really nice warm weather. The liquid stuff that was
dropping from the sky was some sort of liquid sunshine quite
peculiar to the Phoenix area. Hey, I am not going to complain. At
least it was comfortable in a short sleeve shirt.
After waiting forever for Continental Airlines to find and
deliver the baggage, I was greeted by a familiar face in the
person of Ron Fife and his lovely wife Carolyn. They were
gracious enough to provide transportation to the hotel in
Scottsdale and accompany me to a local establishment for some
good Mexican food.
After consuming an abundant amount of food, washed down by an
over abundant amount of Miller Lite, I settled in for the night
and prepared notes for my planned sequence of events needed to
get the bulletin board up in the minimum amount of time.
Early Saturday morning, breakfast at the Thunderbird Inn (located
right at the entrance to Scottsdale Airport), and off to
Perstor's office on Greenway Road, also located adjacent to the
Scottsdale Airport. In fact, if you want to fly in to Scottsdale,
you can roll your plane right up to the Perstor shipping dock,
tell the tower to have them raise the hangar door, and have the
shipping department load the plane up with controllers. How's
that for location, location, location.
Attach those PC's. We did that quite early so as to get a good
start. However, I brought 1.2mb diskettes with me loaded with
files from the Sparta PCBoard HD conference. Ah! Test that
prototype 16 bit controller right away. It was in the lab humming
away on overnight tests in an Intel 386 machine, also equipped
with a 1.2mb floppy drive. Our plan was to disconnect the hard
drive from the 8 bit PERSTOR controller where the BBS would be
running, hook it up to the 16 bit controller, transfer all the
files from floppy, transport them intact back to the 8 bit
machine. Voila! It worked. The format on the Miniscribe drive
could be read from and written to by both the 8 bit and 16 bit.
No difference, just plug and play. Nice, nice feature!
The PCBoard software was installed in no time. A breeze when you
have done it a few times. The next step was to get that Qubie'
1200 baud modem to working. No documentation was in sight, as the
modem had been lying around gathering dust for a while. Nine
switches on the front panel had us confused real quick. A call to
Salt Air and a plea for help on modem settings and setup string
was no help. Oh, well. Lets get everything else in place. Modem
operation can come later after all testing is done on the
software.
Proceeding along that line, we installed some fancy graphics
welcome screens, sample bulletin menus, sample conference menus,
and suggested categories for conferences that would follow
different Perstor product lines. All that went into place in a
snap.
Most of the keyboard time was spent in the accompaniment of Ted
Buck, one fine gentleman who provides the technical support for
the Perstor Products. Ted catches on quick, and will have the
operation of a BBS down pat in no time. He is also about the most
patient guy you will ever meet. A real asset to Perstor I must
say.
The Qubie' modem seemed quite sick and did not want to answer the
phone properly, nor shift down to 300 baud after answering the
phone. This prompted some discussion about power users, Perstor
products, and naturally, the two go together very well. So, stage
two planning went into operation. Would a USR Courier 9600 HST
appear in the long range plans? You bet. Perstor is committed to
solid product support and did not hesitate to accept my
recommendation on the high speed modem.
With most of the BBS software in place, it was time to sneak into
the lab and peek at that PERSTOR 16 bit combined Hard Disk/Floppy
controller in operation again. It looked impressive, especially
to this old country boy. But then again, back where I was raised,
we only got electricity a few years ago. The real test would be
in some measurements against the 8 bit controller and evaluation
based on typical measurements I was used to seeing back at Sparta
PCBoard. I came away duly impressed. More about that when I get
clearance from Perstor to release the information. Of course,
that will be included in our continuing series of files on the
Perstor controller line, specifically in a file called
perstor3.arc.
Why the suspense about the Perstor BBS telephone number. No
mystery. US Robotics has not shipped the HST modem yet. When it
is installed and ready to start accepting calls, we will announce
it on Sparta PCBoard, Salt Air's Bulletin #1, etc. In the
meantime, Sparta has established a Perstor specific conference,
and is continuing to offer this medium of support while waiting
for the Perstor BBS to come up.
Enough about the BBS. Let's meet some of the Perstor Staff. Last
names are omitted where I did not write them down. This is to be
sure I do not misspell the name.
Les Blodgett - Chief Executive Officer
Ron Fife - President and Chief Engineer
Designer of the Perstor Cards
Mark Fife - Vice President of Marketing - Responsible
for Distribution and Dealer Network
Carolyn Fife - Office Manager (really runs the company)
Kristi Ferris - Sales Support
Ted Buck - Technical Support Manager - BBS Sysop
Maureen Rice - Handles all the Literature, Mailing Lists, etc.
One fast set of hands on that keyboard!
Safa - Software Engineer -
This young fellow is one sharp cookie on
the Perstor BIOS and microcode
Norma - A charming voice on the phone. I did not get
to meet Norma.
James\______ - These two young fellows take care of all testing,
Bryan/ shipping, etc. They do a heck of a job.
Especially helpful on those short notice "need
the next day" orders. They will stay late and
make sure those orders get shipped. Thanks, guys!
I hope I have not left anyone out. Any omissions are strictly
unintentional.
My overall impression of the Staff at Perstor Systems, Inc. is
very, very favorable. I was impressed with their commitment to
excellence in the products they design and sell. Their knowledge
of the storage needs of the industry, along with products to meet
those increasing needs makes for a very professional approach to
filling that niche of the market. Their contacts in the industry
and solid understanding of bringing new products to the market
place positions Perstor in an enviable spot to become a leader
and moving force in an industry where "sensible solutions to
storage problems" is needed more and more every day.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
TIDBITS
Ah! Almost forgot that some of you just might like to know about
some of the other things going on at Perstor. Will tell you what
I can.
1) Perstor has a new bios for the PS180 AT type controller. The
one with the AT9-103 BIOS. The new one is AT9-105 and was
released to take care of a couple of miscellaneous problems with
Award Bios. Trouble with having to radially select at least 3 DS
lines when using Award and ONE hd hooked up was found to be in
the manner in which Award sets stack space at boot time. Solved
by changing some routines in Perstor Bios to compensate for this
shortcoming.
2) New driver released that will allow adding a second Perstor
controller to the same cpu. Now can recognize the second
controller and up to one partition (can be over 32mb) on each of
two drives hooked up to second controller. Details can be found
on Sparta PCBoard in a file called ADDCTLR.ARC
3) Official announcement of the PERSTOR 200 Series ATF 16 bit
controller will be made on March 21, 1988, at a computer showcase
in Santa Clara, California. Press kits will be released at that
time. Perstor3.arc will also be released on that date.
That's about it for now. See ya on the keys later on.