| [Rant] My AmigaOne Experience | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 06-Oct-2003 15:31 GMT by Joe (Edited on 2003-10-09 10:04:34 GMT by Christian Kemp) | 151 comments
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Read at your own risk.
[ Please also read Alan M Redhouse's side of the story. - CK ]
Hello there. Heres some good things to say to all you chirpy AmigaOne owners.
I ordered a G3SE in November 2002 and it arrived Christmas eve. It wouldnt work from the start. Oh what a fun christmas that was. After a day of owning it I felt like smashing it to pieces. Nothing would boot whatsoever and when it did get so far it would crash at the logon screen.
I called Eyetech and they sorted it out. After a while they switched it to KDE.
Next set of problems. Instability. I tried everything and nothing would resolve. The machine was basically unusable, it was logging out randomly. I posted on sites like this for help and didnt get much really. Then it wouldnt even boot KDE after a while for some reason, so I tried a re-install.
Then it decided not to read any CD's.
I just left it there gathering dust, too stressful to even think about to be perfectly honest.
Fast forward to about 3 weeks ago, I called Eyetech and explained about the constant problems. They said if I replaced the ROM chip and installed Debian instead of Suse it would make things better.
I explained to them on the phone, I am a bit of a novice and dont really know how to do this. "Well the instructions are very clear" they say. I say "Well could I just send it back. I dont really know what I'm doing here and I dont want to make things worse". The phone conversation ends.
As I'm getting prepared to post the whole thing off I recieve an envelope from Eyetech which apparently contains a ROM puller and a ROM chip. We did not spot this at the time. There were instructions saying you need a paperclip (not a rom puller) so we got our paperclip and got prepared to remoev the "ROM". The instructions were very clear indeed... right. The photograph supposedly illustrating how to remove the ROM properly is somewhat poor quality and the mans finger is completely covering the ROM chip, thus making it impossible to see which part to remove (like I said on the phone, were novice).
After trying hard to remove the thing we ended up removing the ROM chip AND the socket and most of the pins. We knew instantly the motherboard was now well and truly ####ed. We call Eyetech and they say there is nothing we can do now. After that we discover the ROM chip and puller hidden in a tiny sponge on the back of the envelope, with the replacement ROM (if we had seen this we would have known which exact part to remove).
As you can imagine I am furious with this, after 10 months of sheer hell from investing in the new "Amiga" computer, I am over £900 down, not going to get a penny back really and I feel like smashing the thing up.
Such a thing as this is what has driven me more and more away from the Amiga community.
One furious ex-Amigan.
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| My AmigaOne Experience : Comment 107 of 151 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Bill Toner on 07-Oct-2003 16:14 GMT | >I ordered a G3SE in November 2002 and it arrived Christmas eve.
>
>...
>
>I just left it there gathering dust, too stressful to even think about to be >perfectly honest. Fast forward to about 3 weeks ago, I called Eyetech and >explained about the constant problems.
If the thing didn't work, you should have sent it back right away and not waited almost a year. Regardless of who's fault it may or may not be that the thing didn't work at the start, your first mistake was waiting so very long to do anything about it, letting it gather dust all year as you said.
Now, yes, Linux can be a pain to install, even for people that are pretty good with computers. KDE, Gnome, whatever GUI software, anything in Linux land is certainly not for the novice to get running. If people who don't by any means consider themseves novices with computers call in help with Linux, you'd think a novice would be bugging lots of people for help. Also, if Eyetech's documentation wasn't sufficient for you to know which ROM chip to remove, what the he?! were you pulling on a socket for?? And surely it's common sense to dig through a package and find a replacement ROM chip for certain before you start trying to remove chips from the board, if not to help identify where to pull but to at least prove that there is indeed such a replacement chip in the package at all.
I have purchased things from Eyetech, and been somewhat disappointed in their documetnation as well, and your board may have been defective I don't know. but it's hard to feel sympathy for someone that failed to return a possibly defective item for nearly a year, and it's also hard to feel sympathy for someone that started yanking on chips before he even saw there actually was a new chip in the package, not yet having found it "hidden in a tiny sponge on the back of the envelope", you didn't even know if you had anything to replace the old one with, why were you trying to remove anything?! If you hadn't even found the new chip, you should have been asking Eyetech if they forgot to pack it with the instructions at that point...
Now, it may be possible htere's no Amiga folks to help you near by, fine. Surely there's someone that is handy with a soldering iron and/or pulling socketed chips somewhere around. There's likely to be a linux geek somewhere not too far these days, and he (I'd be suprised if it would be a she) would certainly enjoy the challenge of getting it running on hardware new to him. Linux geeks are like that.
That said, hopefully some other novices have learned something from this.
1. If it doesn't work, don't collect dust with it for a year, either GET HELP with it or SEND IT BACK! If a phone call with Eyetech isn't sufficiently helpful in fixing a problem, talk to more people or return it as defective as the vendor is unable to help you fix it..
2. Realize that Linux is not for newbies. If you're not comfortable figuring it out or won't/can't find sufficient help, don't buy something beyond your novice expertise level, which Linux is beyond any novice and most intermediate folks. Wait until a more suitable software package is available before spending the cash.
3. If you don't personally know anyone able to help, ask in forums or put an ad for help in the newspaper if needed.
4. If you aren't certain which chip to pull, DON'T PULL ANYTHING!
5. Check your package for ALL CONTENTS. If you haven't found the "hidden" replacement chip in the envelope yet, then there is not yet anything to replace, period, full stop. Don't begin working until all the pieces are fully accounted for. This applies to ANY PROJECT of ANY KIND, not just changing AmigaOne chips.
6. If you break something and can no longer return it, go back to finding help as you may find someone able to repair it for you. Yanking a chip off a circuit board isn't the end of the universe, there's a good chance it can be salvaged.
7. If you are no longer interested in getting the thing working, returned, replaced, or repaired, don't throw it in the trash bin. Send me an email, I may be willing to take it off your hands and pay shipping to get it here, in some cases perhaps even a small payment for the thing itself. (I wouldn't pay full price, after all at this point you consider it worthy of the trash bin don't you? And there is some chance you'd be right...) |
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