CompuServe Messages

Just thought I'd share what I've done on my Christmas season. I picked a DPS PAR up about 6 weeks ago and had difficulties getting it to initialize from the getgo. After about a month the Micropolis hard drive quit spinning up when the machine was warm. So I called DPS. After busy signals and no return call throughout that day, I tried calling Micropolis to see if they had an opinion. They assured me it must be my power supply. So off I go on a quest for a new power supply. After three days I was able to secure a new power supply. Strange thing, everything else is working, though. Still the same problem. So I called DPS. They assured me it must be the hard drive. I called the distributor where I got the hard drive. They tell me after 15 days they have a contract that says I have to go back to Micropolis. I call Micropolis, wait on hold for 50 minutes, oh, and by the way it was 20 minutes on the first call, and it's not an 800 number. They say, well, if you've checked everything else, it might be the hard drive. They tell me they can ship one out. It'll take about 4 weeks. I call back the distributor where I got the hard disk. After about a 15 minute very heated conversation, they suggest that I should call back Micropolis and tell them it was a new drive and maybe they'll waive the $50 charge to send the drive out right away. I called back Micropolis. They agree to send a new hard drive as long as I guarantee the full purchase price on my credit card. Two days pass. The drive comes Fed Ex. BTW, meanwhile I've lost a 30 second tv commercial with about 100 hours of rendering time to all of this. I install the new drive. Strange thing, there is a little A sticker attached to the end of the serial number. We'll get into that later. I begin the arduous task of trying to recover whatever I can off the first drive, first thing every morning when the office is still cold and the original drive will still spin. A couple days later, I've got most of it over. After an attempt on attitude readjustment to get myself back into a creativity mode, I start to work. After about 10 frames written from 3D Studio to the new drive, it starts writing corrupted frames. I go in, delete those frames, optimize the disk, and start over. This time it writes half the original frame, half the second frame, garbage through the middle, and the old file name to the new animation. I call DPS. Must be my memory manager. I assure them that my QEMM has been quite stable over the last 2 years. The guy tells me that EMM386 is much better. OK, I'll try anything once. I've now got every computer board in my system strewn throughout the room. I'm now at this point out about 2 weeks of production time. Needless to say, EMM386 did not solve the problem. Another call to DPS. I assure them there is absolutely no way it could be a hardware conflict, because I no longer have any hardware in this computer that it could conflict with. They agree that maybe they should look at the board. And oh, btw, they ship ground UPS, which is of course the preferred mode of transportation of your computer parts during the holidays, if you're in a professional production environment and need your stuff in a hurry. I call FedEx and start an account. After 2 or 3 days of the board being at DPS I get a call from the technician, who has been working the board over. This guy was a very articulate individual, very reluctant to pass judgement or blame (That was refreshing), and he was unable to get the board to hiccup once. I say, I'll call back up Micropolis. At this point I've got Dorothy's personal number in customer service. I ask her how her weekend's been. She says fine. I said "Is there any chance you could have shipped me a defective drive?" She says "It's possible." and agrees to send me out an additional drive if I give her my credit card number to guarantee the full cost of the drive. I call FedEx to return this drive. BTW, I've now got a fairly good rapport going with my FedEx guy. You know he's from Vermont originally, and used to have rabbits. He's having Chicken Stir Fry for supper today. Nice guy. Another day later, and the new drive arrives. I install the new drive. Everything seems to be working ok. Hallelujah! I begin to reassemble my computer and clean up my office, which now looks like Ghengis Khan stopped over for lunch and stayed a week. I begin to try to get back to work. BTW, the new backup system I just purchased seems to be working ok. More incidental expenditures. It's only money. After about a day, while doing a test preview, one of the frames seems to hiccup and make a strange noise when 3D Studio tries to write the file. After going into the PAR software, that frame also hiccups when you play the animation and makes a really strange noise on the hard disk. I start trying to rediagnose the drive again, using all the tricks I've learned over recent history. After optimizing the disk, the hiccup disappears. But guess what, it reappears in the middle of another file. I call up DPS. I talk to, I think it was the same guy who told me I had to be using EMM386, who now says it sounds like some kind of thermo-something on the hard disk. It's now Christmas Eve and everyone is closed for the holidays. And I am now very close to 3 weeks of screwing around listening to everyone blame everyone else. Today I call Micropolis. My first question is, what is the little A sticker after the serial number? Are you sending me a remanufactured drive in lieu of my faulty new drive? They confirm, all replacement drives are remanufactured, and they have no new drives there. I reply, Micropolis has <no> new hard drives? He says, no, not there at customer service. He suggests if I want a new drive, I should go back to where I bought the drive. I share just part of my happy story, and he puts me on hold, returns after speaking with probably a supervisor, and agrees to call their other facility and try to send me a new drive. End of saga to date. First a warning: Anyone who would not use Stacker on a hard disk should definitely stay away from the DPS PAR because trying to diagnose one of these systems is worse than trying to find an electrical problem in a British car. (To all of you non-automotive types, they use a positive ground.) Another thing, I wish others would have been this forthcoming with how difficult to diagnose and basically flakey this whole juryrigged operation can be. To say that this mess is a handsdown replacement for single frame to Betacam is a far too oversimplified take on things. If an edit deck won't edit, you send it in for service, and either borrow or rent a replacement. Maybe an afternoon's driving. This mess has cost me three weeks, and over a hundred hours of rendering time, and didn't do much for holiday cheer. I did have a rather good Christmas, didn't come down into the office all weekend. Didn't even want to look at the rat's nest of crap lying all over the place. How was your Christmas? Roger D.