Carousel Volume 2 #1/carousel.iso/mactosh/review/tecmar_h.txt

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From: mtu!russell@glacier (Russell Reid)
To: glacier!"INFO-MAC@SUMEX"@glacier
Subject: Tecmar hard disk
Cc: russell@glacier

I bought a Tecmar hard disk a month after I got my Mac, not quite a year
ago.  I thought choosing a hard disk was a matter of performance and price.
It never occurred to me that I would need "support" from the company.  I
was wrong, and my dealings with Tecmar have been so incredibly bad that I
would like to warn anyone considering a Tecmar disk.  I have dealt with
Tecmar three times:  once to buy the hard disk, once to get the first
software upgrade, and once to get the second. My dealings with them have
been like a TV sitcom.  There's no way to describe it, really, but I'll
summarize.  I probably have phoned Tecmar 25 times, maybe more, and my
local dealer has easily called 10 times for me.  I can't convey the
frustrating feeling of those calls--I always felt that if I could talk to
somebody reasonable for 15 seconds we could settle something, and I never
was able to.  I always reached a recording, which put me on hold and then
transferred me to the message center.  No matter what kind of message I
left, if someone eventually called back, they had received no information
but my name.  Sometimes the person who called me back would transfer me to
technical support, which was always busy, and then transferred me
automatically to the message center.  Again.  Once I was transferred three
times in a single call without talking to any human or even leaving a
message.  All this at daytime rates, all at my own expense.  Below, when I
say I called Tecmar, you must remember that I have never successfully just
"called Tecmar".  I don't think it would be possible to parody many of the
calls I made.

First, I just bought a hard disk.  I bought it from my authorized Apple
dealer, in case something went wrong, because I am not a sophisticated
user.  The thing came, I set it up, and it didn't work.  (It turned out the
fault was with the disk cartridge.  Tecmar had sent me one with masking
tape on it saying "in-house".  I didn't know that meant it was faulty and
had been kept for testing, and didn't learn that for weeks.)  I called
Tecmar.  Over and over and over.  I wanted to talk to someone who might
have a guess as to the problem, so I would know if I should return the
unit, replace the cartridge, replace the accompanying software, etc.  After
10 days of calling, I blew up at an operator and said I wanted to talk to
somebody RIGHT NOW.  The guy I talked to was nice, and helpful.  I happened
to mention the "in-house" label, and he opined that might be the problem,
so I returned the disk to Tecmar for a replacement (actually, I had the
dealer do it, to minimize problems.) After weeks of waiting, calling, etc.
I ordered a new one... Tecmar had lost the old one.  A month later they
found that they'd received it, after all, and shipped me a new one.
Meantime I had bought a new one for $100.00, and had to wait two weeks to
get it.

By the time I had the proper disk cartridge a software upgrade had been
released, but Tecmar refused to ship it to either me or the Apple dealer.
They only shipped to distributors, and though the one my dealer dealt with
was a large one, it wasn't handling the upgrades.  It went on and on... I
called various places, the local dealer called, etc.  Calls to Tecmar were,
as always, a circus.  Eventually another distributor, I think Rhino Sales
in Michigan, agreed to send me the upgrade.  It was incompatible with the
old software so that all files had to be erased (a problem I underestimated
until it was too late).  Once it was installed.... guess what, it didn't
work right.  (The printer had to be plugged into the back of the hard disk,
and the printing screwed up.)  It turned out that one DIP switch in the
printer had to be reset to handle the print spooling, but it took me
another week of telephoning and being bounced around before I learned that.
(Again, once I talked to someone who knew something, it was quick.  There
was no mention of the DIP switch in the documentation...)  Whew, ready to
go.  Until I got the new Finder and System, and tried to work with a
LaserWriter.  Not only was the Tecmar software incompatible with
MacTerminal and Thunderscan, it was also incompatible with the new Finder
and LaserWriter.  Sigh.  Call Tecmar to find out when the new software
would come out, and if maybe they'd let me have it this time.  (Rhino sales
had declined to help on a regular basis.)

Getting the second software upgrade was even more amazing than my other
dealings.  Several times I was told it was shipping, or would be shipping
next week.  Familiar story, I guess.  Then Tecmar told me the upgrade was
posted on CompuServe, and I could get it there.  I knew nothing about
CompuServe, and asked a friend who did.  He said it would help a lot to
know the file name or where it was posted.  I called to ask about that, and
was told they had never heard anything about it.  I persisted, asking
different questions on different days.  (You'd understand all this if you
could see the routine I had to go through to print on the LaserWriter, or
how slow 5 megs is when it has lots of files.)  One time a very nice fellow
asked what I meant.  I said CompuServe was a bulletin board system, and
people could download software if they were members.  "Gee, that sounds
neat.  But do you need a modem or something?"  Honest, he really said that.
I gave up.  The CompuServe posting had been taken off before I got to it.
At some point it dawned on me that I could try the old version 1.0 with the
new Finder and see what happened.  Of course, you always run the risk of
losing everything, but what the heck.  It worked!  so did the "Install
LaserWriter", and you could use MacTerminal if you kept the document (but
not necessarily the application) on a floppy.  I was immediately less
desperate.  Now I could print without copying the file to a floppy,
shutting down the hard disk, starting up with the floppy, printing and
capturing the PostScript, copying that to a MacTerminal disk, uploading to
the VAX, ad infinitum.  But after the "two weeks" they had last told me had
elapsed, I called Tecmar again.  Yep, they were shipping, though they
charged me $25.00.  Okay, it's cheap compared to the phone bills and the
hassle.  A week later I called again (and again and again, waiting to be
allowed to talk to someone) to se where it was: they had promised 2-3 days.
When someone finally called me back, he asked if I'd like to order the
upgrade (my message asked why it hadn't arrived yet.)  I said no, I wanted
to know why I hadn't gotten it yet.  "Oh, we ran out of documentation, and
it will be a week or two to print more up."  Oh wow, blow my mind, I didn't
know what to say.  They sell $1500.00 to $2000.00 items and they can't get
it together to count how many they have sold???  And what could possibly be
in the documentation that takes more than a page to print?

The answer, of course, is that there is nothing in the documentation at
all.  It is page after glossy page with virtually no content (an entire
page to show you how to turn your Macintosh so its back faces you, another
to tell you to fasten one end of the cable to the printer or modem port,
etc.)  But I didn't need a new booklet, I only needed a couple of words
about what was different.  There were only two sentences in the book about
upgrades, and following their directions didn't work.  The upgrade software
came with a cryptic application that wasn't mentioned at all in the
documentation, and which did something inexplicable and unexplained to the
disk.  Still no mention of DIP switches in the new book, but I am now
sadder and wiser.

As far as I can tell, the only thing the new version accomplishes is
compatibility with the new Finder, which seems pretty basic.  The print
spooler is its only reason for being, because version 1.0 does everything
except free a port for you.  And the new print spooler is bug-eaten.  It
does not work with MacPascal.  It does not work with MacFortran.  It does
not work with DB Master.  It did not work printing draft quality from
MacDraw, though I only tried that once.  It does not work with ThunderScan.
It will not spool the LaserWriter (and the documentation does not tell you
this simple fact.)  Despite Tecmar's assurances to the contrary, the new
software is NOT compatible with MacTerminal either.  And it is incompatible
in ways that still have me struggling to figure it out.  (At first I could
get away with having an already-created MacTerminal document on a floppy
with no system file. If this document used the printer port, the system
wouldn't hang and it wouldn't transfer control to the floppy.  But I once
opened the MacTerminal document with Edit, to snarf some downloaded stuff,
and now MacTerminal won't let me back into ANY MacTerminal document as long
as MacTerminal is on the hard disk.  If you can figure that one out, you
are a lot smarter than I am!)

I called Tecmar,(when will I learn??) to ask about these features.  After I
was, as usual, automatically transferred to the message center, which
doesn't identify itself as such, I thought to ask the operator to read me
back my message after I had left it.  The only thing she had was my name...
The person I talked to--eventually--suggested that I re-initialize my hard
disk cartridge because perhaps the print spooler was written on a bad
sector.  I resisted at first, because it is a headache to back up and
replace 5 megs of stuff.  Tecmar's "backup utility" is won't allow you to
back up a disk or volume, only ONE FILE AT A TIME!  Even the Finder can
shift-click to select several files.  Despite my suspicions (if it prints
OK from MacWrite and Word, etc, why should the sector be bad?) I relented
and nuked the disk.  It was a waste of time, (a lot of time), and as usual
I screwed something up and lost some important data.  Sigh.

Version 2.2 also has a great new feature--a "reset print spooler" option
for when you are printing 2000 mailing labels and the printer jams.
Trouble is, to get to the feature you must quit the application you are in,
return to the desktop, open Tecmar's Volume Manager, and THEN reset the
print spooler.  Naturally, that takes awhile, and the application may not
permit you to quit till you are done printing.... Pretty smart, Tecmar.
Why not a desk accessory??  I happen to be in a big pickle when DB Master
and programming languages don't print.  I need to print those 2000 mailing
labels, and MacWrite and Edit insist on skipping over the perforations in
the paper.  The last version of Tecmar's print spooler also screwed up, but
I could print to a file and then run a little Pascal program to print it.
Now I'm dead.. I even tried FORTRAN.  I suppose if I experiment enough I
can make the headers in MacWrite the right size to skip exactly two labels
at each "perforation".  But it takes MacWrite five MINUTES to open a text
file with 2000 mailing labels in it!  I think I should return the upgrade
2.2 to Tecmar and ask for a refund of my $25.00.  I haven't tested the
speeds yet, but I have an idea that old version 1.0 is just as fast as 2.2,
also.  Tecmar should use the memory in the MacDrive for a cache memory or
something.  I have very little use for a print spooler that will only spool
an ImageWriter, and which is a big headache to reset when the ImageWriter
jams.  I long since discarded their backup utility, configured my disk into
one big volume, and set that volume to mount automatically at startup.
What are hard disks for, anyway?  By the way, the copious glossy
documenation neglected to mention that I had to set the system volume to
mount automatically at startup....

I heartily recommend that all you folks run out and buy yourselves a Tecmar
product.

Russell Reid
Michigan Technological University