Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!sri-unix!ctnews!pyramid!hplabs!ucbvax!ford-wdl53!rion From: rion@ford-wdl53 (Rion Cassidy) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi Subject: (none) Message-ID: <8712161951.AA00853@ford-wdl53.wdl.com> Date: 16 Dec 87 19:51:41 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 50 Earlier last week I posted a complaint regarding SGI hardware maintenance on one of our IRIS's here at Ford Aerospace. Because of the reaction to that posting, I want to clarify my intent and apologize for my tone. The reason for this is that several people who have seen the letter have felt "shocked" and "disturbed" at the language I used, and while I consider that over reaction, I want to make amends. First, as is virtually always the case with people posting to the net, my opinions were mine, not my company's. In case you don't remember my original letter, we have had our machine stop with a kernel parity error on six different occasions in the last couple months. Each time we called SGI in to fix it. My intent was to solicit experiences others have had with SGI hardware problems and the repair thereof, and also to alert SGI that "unsuccessful" customer service can hurt their reputation. I believe that I accomplished my goals, however I was probably a bit heavy-handed in implying that SGI personnel are witless and incompetent. I honestly don't believe that they are, and only used those terms to get their attention. I apologize. Apparently my letter is now being circulated at SGI, as I have been called by our local sales rep and the head of hardware maintenance, both of whom suggested that I contact them rather than posting angry letters. Here are a couple of the responses that I have recieved: From an individual at scubed: "Backplane problems are difficult to diagnose because hardware tests usually pass (my experience). The machine simply crashes for various reasons. You end up chasing the problem until every board is swapped out without fixing it." From Toronto: "The solution: SGI has a set of PALS, 7 for the IP2 and 1 for each memory board in the system. Replacement takes less than half an hour. I don't know how fast they are producing them now, but we had a long wait between the discovery of the likely fix and actually testing it out ... I first called in the problem May 4 and received the last set of PALS Oct 7." Rion Cassidy rion@ford-wdl1.arpa ...{sgi,sun,ucbvax}!wdl1!rion