Motherboard replacement

[C M Votava]

Well, I just got a new unixpc motherboard back from San Leandro CA, after
shipping my old one to them for repair, and thought I should relay to the
net how everything went.

First, I'd like to thank Gary Butler for posting the note describing all this
(excerpts below), and also Ben Wollberg of AT&T who was very patient, and
informative on the phone when I called.

Here's the deal, if you have some flakey/bad components in your unixpc, and
you want to swap them out, you can send the defective ones to Ben, and he'll
send back refurbished ones that work. The price list is as follows:

(this is from Gary's article)

> 	Motherboard     120.75  Repairable
			[ ^ this price has gone up to 160.00 ]
> 			300.00  Replacement Price approximate
> 
> 	Power Supply    45.00   Repairable
> 			75.00   Replacement Price approximate
> 
> 	Hard Disk       115.00 to
> 			200.00  Replacement Price approximate
> 
> 	Floppy Disk     45.00   Repairable
> 
> The repairable price is just that, all other prices are exchange but the
> component you are bringing in is unrepairable, such as the motherboard
> burnt up because the fan failed.
> 
> All components and parts carry a 90 day warranty.
> 
> They also have 64K and 256K memory chips that you can buy for replacement
> or upgrade. These chips sell in sets of 18 for 40.00 or if you want to
> buy refurbished chips the sets go for 28.00. What they do to refurbish
> the chips I didn't ask and don't know.

	[ They will also install sockets on the memory chips, or blank ]
	[ sockets for you on the motherboard, for a reasonable fee.    ]

> 
> Ben also said that if you have modified the motherboard to handle the
> larger disk that they would still take the board as repairable exchange.
> 
> He did recommend that if you had installed any chips you wish to save
> that you should take them off the board before you bring it in for 
> exchange as they will not swap chips for you.

	[ I took my PAL chip off the motherboard, that gave me greater ]
	[ than 9 head access to the hard disk before I sent it in. Now ]
	[ all I need to do is re-wire it in on the new motherboard.    ]

> 
> The address and phone number follow, if you have any further questions
> you may call them or you can send me email and I will get the answers.
> 
> 	Address 2200 Williams at Doolittle in San Leandro
>	Phone   (415) 678-1355 Supervisor or
> 		(415) 678-1353 Ben Wollberg

Here are some reasons why you may consider sending in your motherboard, even
if it's in good working oorder...

My motherboard was a very old 0.5M board (fully populated 64k memory chip set),
that was not working properly. The new motherboard came in with 1M on it (for
which I did not pay, it was potluck) and had some white wires on it which
presumably are the latest and greatest hardware upgrades (I have not confirmed
this). If I had the time, I would have soldered in sockets in the other half
of memory, and upgraded to a full 2MB on board, and put in the P5.1 upgrade
like I had before!

The entire exercise took about 10 days (I mailed it in on a Sat, and I got it
back a week later on Tues), and I think I got a great deal.

Feel free to mail me if you have any other questions.

-Craig Votava

[att!]looney!cmv