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