From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhtsa!alice!npoiv!npois!ucbvax!C70:info-cpm Newsgroups: fa.info-cpm Title: Computer Stores .. bleh Article-I.D.: ucb.1511 Posted: Wed Jul 14 20:06:41 1982 Received: Fri Jul 16 00:52:31 1982 >From Bomberger@Office-2 Wed Jul 14 20:06:30 1982 A recent experience left me feeling once again that technology is far ahead of the human ability to cope. I ordered a Morrow 2D controller from a local store after discussing with a salesperson that I wanted to use it on my NorthStar Horizon without displacing the NorthStar disks. I had written my own BIOS and added phantom signals for the NorthStar controller so I was using the top 8 k of memory. No sweat ..We ordered a ROM at F000 and I was assured that several people at the store had done the same thing.. It finally arrived and I studied the literatur, configured the board, plugged it in... of course it did not work. Hours later I determined that Phantom did not work properly. I called the store... Oh yes, phantom doesn't work! Since I had discussed this with the salesperson and the board came configured with phantom enabled, I was disgusted. I modified my external phantom generator to include the morrow range and got the controller to boot. I noticed that if I did not boot the Morrow at least once, I was not able to use it. NOWHERE in the manual, that seems incredibly detailed, was it mentioned that certain areas of morrow RAM must be initialized and that the controller chip is not reset at RESET. I copied some code from the Boot portion of the ROM and am on the air. I wish that computer stores would charge up front for "aid" instead of chargin everybody a premium to pay salespeople to teach BASIC to potential customers. The people at the store were not able to help and even supplied misleading information. End of Flame. -------