Convergent tells all, more HD stuff; HwNote09

[Jan Isley]

In article <379 at uncle.UUCP>, jbm at uncle.UUCP (John B. Milton) writes:
> 
> What follows is, as they say from the horses mouth. The horse in this case
> is Convergent Technology (CT), makers of the UNIXpc/7300/3b1/S-50 for those of
> you tuning in late. This information comes from someone who actually worked on
> this machine. His name is in /usr/installed/.list. I spoke with him today on
> the phone, but Jan Isley (jan at bagend) tracked him down. I thank him a great
> deal for spending time with me on the phone.

Yes it's true, there is still someone at CTI who remembers our orphaned 
machine.  PLEASE, do not mail/call/write me asking for a name or a phone 
number, the price paid for the info that John and I got is that the person 
at CTI remain annonymous, and that he could forward information requests 
to me.  

I also have the straight poop on the P5.1 and am willing to help anyone who 
wants to do the upgrade.  

Flame on:

I cannot wait for the ---holes to flame me on this one.  No, I did not buy
the P5.1 from IDT or TRC and yes, I did get the information "straight from 
the horses mouth at CTI.  IDT and TRC can take their $350 charge for the P5.1 
and go straight out of business with it.  Every day I am offered a multitude 
of opportunities to be ashamed of my species.

While I'm flaming ... BEWARE OF TRC.  Fools are made so that people like TRC
can stay in business.  I was told buy 2 different sales persons at TRC that
the 3b1 power supply was rated over 100 watts more than the 7300 power supply,
and that for a mere $270 AND my puny old 7300 power supply, they would send me
a new (reconditioned) big powerful 3b1 power supply.

The one and only difference between the 7300 and 3b1 power supplies is: the 
3b1 has the hard disk drive power connecter on the power supply board instead
of the motherboard.  The conversion takes about 2 minutes longer than it takes
to warm up your soldering iron.

For less than 1/4 the price TRC charges to exhange a 7300 power supply for a 
"3b1" power supply, the very nice people at the AT&T repair center in San 
Leandro will exchange a dead power supply for a new one.

Flame off.

No, I do not have a PAL burner, sorry.  If I had a bizzillion requests for 
the PAL, I could get them done.  I have thought about buying a bunch of chips
and getting them programmed but the thought of spending major bucks for a box
full of PALs that 14 (?) people in the whole world wants does not excite me.
You may not want to do just the P5.1, at least not until after John gets 
through with the latest HwNote series, stay tuned.


> The P6 was a reality internally at CT in the prototype stage. There were never
> any production machines made because AT&T was backing out. The rest, as they
> say is history. 

When my system boots, it claims to be a P5.1 board ... but ... Next time you 
run diagnostics (I am using 3.51a) try asking for the version number, in expert
mode type:

	exprt>V

and my system responds:

	DIAGNOSTICS - Main Board P6

	Built:Sat Apr 18 18:28:21 PST 987 in directory /usr/src/CORE/diag


Hmmm....Where did the P6 come from???  Just how much P6 software is in 3.51?


Jan	jan at bagend.UUCP {..gatech..}!bagend!jan | imagine that I had something
------------------------------------------------| totally incredible to say and
home (404)434-1335	work (404)263-9200x4282 | that I wrote it down here