#AAPRO FAILURE
I'm not affiliated with Autodesk Tech Support in any way. I spend from
7-10 hours a week on Compuserve supporting the products that my group
develops because it gives me valuable insight into my customers. There are
many many hardware-related questions that I can't answer, but I guarantee
you that I can answer even the most gnarly technical questions about how
our products work. It _frustrates_ me that hardware is such a nightmare,
but it doesn't keep me from developing software (almost).
The incompatibility would be between the Phar Lap memory management kernel
and your IDE controller. I've seen it many times before… especially when
the IDE controller also has a serial and parallel port on it.
The Phar Lap kernel is licensed by Autodesk and is developed completely
independantly in Massachusetts. It is NOT perfect, but does a basically
good job. One of the main reasons why 3DS and AA Pro can't be sold through
retail channels is because Phar Lap is so finnicky and it requires a
competent dealer to make sure his customers have robust hardware.
Regarding channels of tech support… Autodesk sells a $3000/yr support
contract to end users that provides very high quality support for all
products. Other than that, you can get one of the tech guys here on CIS
(they log on on their own time), or you can do this through your dealer.
I'm sorry, but that's all I can tell you right now. If you can get your
dealer to swap your IDE card with a more-expensive unit (in IDE-land,
that's about $40), you'd at least be able to tell if it's the controller.
– G