Everex Step 386/20 -- Power-up problems!

[Chip Salzenberg]

Once upon a time, A T Engineering bought several Everex Step 386/20
computers and sold some of them to our customers.
They were great.
They were fast.
If you powered them on while the printer was on and connected, they were
dead.  Nothing.  Nada.  Not even the fancy front panel display.

This problem was nothing more than a nuisance until we found that the same
problem would be caused by leaving an Archive tape drive on and plugged in.
Of course, the Xenix drivers for the Archive only look for the tape at
power-up, so if you turn off the drive so the computer will start, then you
can't use the tape at all.  And trying to use the tape with the computer
dead was, at best, a waste of time.

The nice people from Everex came in and replaced our rev E motherboard with
a rev G motherboard, which fixed the problem.  Unfortunately, that upgrade
isn't supposed to be free, and we're still trying to work that out.  In the
meantime, our customers with rev E motherboards can't use their Archive tape
drives unless they're willing to shell out $500.  This is not making our
customers happy.

So has anyone else had this trouble with Everex Step 386 motherboards?  Are
we the only Everex users with printers and Archive tapes?  What's going on?
-- 
Chip Salzenberg             <chip at ateng.com> or <uunet!ateng!chip>
A T Engineering             Me?  Speak for my company?  Surely you jest!
	  "It's no good.  They're tapping the lines."