Message-ID: <522@desoto.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Jul-84 10:00:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: desoto.522
Posted: Tue Jul  3 10:00:51 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Jul-84 03:34:02 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Piscataway
Lines: 55



I guess the big Atari news is the sale of Atari.  Both the
video game and computer divisions have been sold; Warner
is retaining the Coin-Op division.  The TV news just said
that it was sold to the man who formerly ran Commodore...
though his name escapes me at the moment, is this the
same guy who just left Commodore after umpteen years there?
I wonder if the name Atari will still be used, or will
Warner keep rights to that name.  Judging from the internal
conflicts between Warners and Atari, I think this is for the
best...Atari should be owned by computer company, not by
a giant entertainment conglomerate. Opinions?

On other things, a couple of words about printers.  My computer
is begging for a printer, but my pocketbook cringes at the
idea, so I've been looking for a low cost (under $200) printer.
I actually bought the Alphacom 41 printer for $90, but returned
it the next day.  The print quality was fine, the speed was
fine, it could do graphics, but one thing I hadn't thought
of made me return it...the paper.  It comes with thermal
4.5 inch roll paper.  I didn't think it would make a difference,
but after disassembling a 30 sector file, I had a completely
unmanageable strip of paper covering my living room floor.  THe
output resembles a huge supermarket cash register receipt.  Besides,
the printer is cheap but the paper (which is not that big a roll)
costs almost $5.00 a roll.  I will be getting an Atari 1025 printer.
Seems the bottom fell out of the price, and they're selling
around here for $189 (not bad for a printer listing at $550 and
selling in the magazines for ~$350).  I'd appreciate any
feedback from people using that printer already.

Another random note.  I have a Rana 1000 disk drive; it's my
third and IT doesn't work any better than my first two (which
went back to the factory).  Since my warantee was up, I took
the metal lid off to perhaps see why the drive was getting
CRC checks all over the place when trying to read.  When I
took the lid off, the drive worked like a charm.  Put the
lid on, the drive went flakey again.  Lid off, fine.  All I
had to do was APPROACH the drive with the lid, and it went
bad again.  I called RANA, and they knew about the problem...
the motor was improperly shielded.  They wanted me to send
it back to the factory, but after 2 other turkeys, I decided
to keep the drive and simply operate it with he lid off (I
keep it covered when not in use).  I've used it this way for
about a month now, and I haven't had a single misread sector.
If you have a RANA drive under warantee and it is acting
flakey (like taking 5 minutes to load a program), you
should call RANA. (By the way, does anyone know how to
shield the motor? It's an MPI half height mechanism).

				Ben Weber
				pyuxmm!benw
				AT&T Technologies
				Piscataway, NJ