CompuServe Messages

June, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but recently we had a demo 486/33 computer in our office and it presented many of the systems you describe; Totally irratic behaviour running AAPRO, mainly memory protection faults. In fact, the machine was very irratic running *ANY* protected mode programs, such as AutoCAD, 3D Studio, etc. The manufacturer would swear up and down that they tested everything on the motherboard design, but luckily for us this machine was only demo, and we hadn't yet committed to paying for it. We tried a second identical machine, with exactly the same types of results. After some time, the dealer replaced it with a more recent model of the machine (updated bios, etc.) and the new machine hasn't even so much as coughed since we started it up with all the identical protected mode software. I noticed that in the hardware setup utility in the newer machine, a wait state had been added, indicating that the original design simply couldn't handle protected mode memory situations very well. I hate to suggest it, but you may end up finding out how cooperative your hardware vendor really is. In other words….it's probably hardware, not software! -Jeff