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It was (almost) 20 years ago this happed; The amiga ....
13 years ago
You know, sometimes when you dig through old stuff it can bring back memories. Sometimes good ones, sometimes fairly good ones and then sometimes - ones which really get on your nerves. This happened to me just recently and quite unexpectly!
You see I was digging through some old computer stuff I've kept and after looking through it all I turned up an old card which goes into a computer. At first it looked very much like on old 486 vesa local bus style card (*long*!) but then I noticed what it was.
It wasn't a 486 vesa card at all. It was my old - and unused Amiga accelerator card.
That then sparked another memory. That of my broken Amiga 1500, WTS Electronics, Commodore itself and Wang computers.
What had happened is that I'd bought (or paritally with parents) a new computer way back in 1992. It was a brand new Commodore Amiga 1500 (Think Amiga 2000, but with two floppy drives and no hard drive in the same case). But then the computer died on me, WTS/Wang/Commdoore replaced it, it died again and well, the rest is a long story.
If you are wondering why I didn't send the computer back to where I'd first bought it in the first place btw -- that's because when it died I did ask this of the place where I'd bought it and was told "Your warranty is with commodore, speak to them".
So I typed up a note to send to them - without any proper sort of word processor (didn't have one!). Oddly enough, this note still exists.
Incidentally here's the actual note sent to them -- from memory I kept the original and made a photocopy of this note and sent it to them. Don't worry about everything being in upper case btw; that's how it appears on the note.
I've left out the names but it really dosen't matter now I guess. This company and the phone number too are both completely defunct.
Anyway here's the note. Remember this was back in 1992 -- 20 years ago.
FOR THE ATTENTION OF :
UNIT AMIGA 1500 : SER NO 043065
REF NO 21015
PURCHASED FROM W.T.S ELECTRONICS LUTON
ORDERED AND PAID FOR 16.10.92
RECEIVED 24.11.92
FAILED 27.11.92
CONTACTED CUSTOMER CARE (CUSTOMER CARE) 081 231 3700
12 TELEPHONE CALLS MADE TO ABOVE (REASON FOR DELAY OF REPAIR) WAITING FOR SPARE PARTS. CUSTOMER CARE SAID THEY WOULD CALL ME BACK 8 TIMES, ONLY 1 RETURN CALL RECEIVED.
ENGINEER VISITED 6.1.93 SYSTEM BOARD REPLACED
ITEM FAILED 15.2.93
CONTACTED CUSTOMER CARE
14 TELEPHONE CALLS MADE
CUSTOMER CARE SAID THEY WOULD CALL ME BACK 6 TIMES
NO CALLS RETURNED
ON LAST CALL TO CUSTOMER CARE PRIOR TO 30.4.93 WAS ADVISED SPARES
AVALIABLE AND WOULD CALL FRIDAY 30.4.93.
1st TELEPHONE CALL 30.4.93 ADVISED ENGINEER ON HIS WAY
2nd CALL STILL ON WAY
3rd CALL WOULD BE ON SITE WITHIN 2 HOURS
NO VISIT RECEIVED
CALLED CUSTOMER CARE 4.5.93 ADVISED SPARES NOT AVALIABLE THIS WAS
THEN CORRECTED AND ENGINEER WOULD VISIT WITHOUT FAIL 7.5.93.
CALLED CUSTOMER CARE 7.5.93 13.50PM ADVISED ENGINEER ON WAY
CALLED 16.00PM ADVISED ENGINEER STILL ON WAY BUT WOULD CHASE AND
RING ME BACK AT 17.15PM.
NO CALL RECEIVED.
CALLED CUSTOMER CARE AT 17.20PM ADVISED ENGINEER WOULD STILL VISIT
NO VISIT RECEIVED
Ok, so let's have a look at this and see what I can remember. (Uh, oh!). First thing you'll notice is that amount of phone calls, first 12 then later 14. The reason why? You might think I was phonespamming but not in this case -- you see "customer care" (if they even picked up the phone; some of those 12/14 calls weren't even answered from memory) would always say "We'll call you back" or "We'll get back to you" or "We'll call you back in a few minuites" or "We'll call you back right away". Cue long wait as you realise they don't, you then call again and you get another load of "We'll call back right away". Et cetera.
Underneath the printed text above all in capitals there's another slightly scrawled hand written note, presumably made my parents I don't know now. Here's what it says; note that this is I think maybe either a few weeks or months on from the above.
Monday 10th Called Customer Service at 09.05. No reason could be given as to why no visit made. Would call me back when reason found. No return call made.
Contacted Customer Care again. Spoke to [name deleted]. Apparently my visit request removed from system, but would chase for reason.
Received call from [name deleted] 0293 . 651355 of Wang.
Apparently they have had no request to repair my Unit.
But Wang have ordered new Mother Board and will call before visit.
This means weeks of waiting for nothing.
Suggest customer care is totally useless.
Well, looks like I'm onto a winner. Finally, after calling and getting fobbed off with non-existant visits I actually get a call back.
Excepct -- they never showed up.
After this point my memory goes pretty hazy. I think in the interim time while this was all going on I might possibly have used and old second hand IBM-Compatible XT for a time. We're not talking much -- 10MB Hard drive, 8086 CPU@4.77Mhz, 512K Ram, 5.14" Floppy, Green screen, CGA Video. Might've even been made by philips, I can't remember.
However all of this does have an ending, a postscript.
I can't be sure exactly and best guess would be late '93 or early '94 but eventually - and this I do remember - calling up commodore themselves. I forget exactly where I got their number from but it might have been from one of the manuals I got with the computer. I can't remember.
After I called them up - and remember, this was an international call as well (Commodore USA; I'm in the UK) I managed to get through and was told that I should really call someone closer, i.e. someone in the UK. I then went through and explained my situation to them on the phone.
A few days later, an engineer turned up. He said very little, he took away my base unit (The amiga 1500) and chaned it for another one. And that - as it might seem - was that.
Except it wasn't.
Some years later - around the mid to late 90s I was working at a small computer company. The job was terrible - really terrible I would not wish that job on anyone. Only minimal advantage was getting a slight discount on computer parts, but that "advantage" pretty much was nullified.
Back in the mid-late 90s you see most people in the UK were just starting to buy PCs. I got my first brand new PC at about the same time. Not much spec wise; we're talking a 386DX40 with 4MB of RAM and ISA VGA video, 210MB Hard drive and 2 speed CDROM. Talk about a power tower, eh? :)
But most people were getting rid of amiga stuff left right and centre back then. Most (if not all) the amiga magzines had folded (no pun intended); commodore was well and truly dead having been bought by (I think) escom (who later vanished). Suffice to say that Amiga hardware was going dirt cheap. At this point I remember buying an accelerator card for my Amiga 1500.
So I bought the card, read the manual put it in the computer and - nothing. Ok, check it over is it in ok? All the jumpers (on the card) ok? Yep all's right all is there. Look on the disk, that's all set up ok. No joy whatsoever, no life no nothing. From memory (I can't recall either) it either did nothing or left me with a totally blank screen.
Then I sent the accelerator card back to the company (no not the above one!) from where I'd bought it from. They checked it over - left right up down centre you name it they checked it. A week later I got it back and they told me they'd tried it in just about every way possible and it worked fine.
It's at this point I noticed one other thing with my "replaced" Amiga 1500. It had - on its bottom - had 4 rather thin cork feet stuck onto it. I've never seen an amiga with those on before. Yes, you guessed right. Commodore/WTS/Wang had left me with one more problem that they never fixed. Sometime later I found out that the amiga's CPU slot (forget its exact name) was dead. Faulty.
And those cork feet? That's because the unit wasn't new, it was second hand. So they'd replaced a dead amiga with a half dead second hand amiga. Hmm.
Tospots!
Unfortunatly I don't have that amiga any more. Makes me wonder just what using an accelerator card on an amiga was really like (never tried it). After getting the 386 I just seemed to have ended up sticking with PCs until we get to today where I'm now running slackware (a Gnu/Linux distro) on my PC.. :) !
I'm still waiting for that engineer though.
SP
You see I was digging through some old computer stuff I've kept and after looking through it all I turned up an old card which goes into a computer. At first it looked very much like on old 486 vesa local bus style card (*long*!) but then I noticed what it was.
It wasn't a 486 vesa card at all. It was my old - and unused Amiga accelerator card.
That then sparked another memory. That of my broken Amiga 1500, WTS Electronics, Commodore itself and Wang computers.
What had happened is that I'd bought (or paritally with parents) a new computer way back in 1992. It was a brand new Commodore Amiga 1500 (Think Amiga 2000, but with two floppy drives and no hard drive in the same case). But then the computer died on me, WTS/Wang/Commdoore replaced it, it died again and well, the rest is a long story.
If you are wondering why I didn't send the computer back to where I'd first bought it in the first place btw -- that's because when it died I did ask this of the place where I'd bought it and was told "Your warranty is with commodore, speak to them".
So I typed up a note to send to them - without any proper sort of word processor (didn't have one!). Oddly enough, this note still exists.
Incidentally here's the actual note sent to them -- from memory I kept the original and made a photocopy of this note and sent it to them. Don't worry about everything being in upper case btw; that's how it appears on the note.
I've left out the names but it really dosen't matter now I guess. This company and the phone number too are both completely defunct.
Anyway here's the note. Remember this was back in 1992 -- 20 years ago.
FOR THE ATTENTION OF :
UNIT AMIGA 1500 : SER NO 043065
REF NO 21015
PURCHASED FROM W.T.S ELECTRONICS LUTON
ORDERED AND PAID FOR 16.10.92
RECEIVED 24.11.92
FAILED 27.11.92
CONTACTED CUSTOMER CARE (CUSTOMER CARE) 081 231 3700
12 TELEPHONE CALLS MADE TO ABOVE (REASON FOR DELAY OF REPAIR) WAITING FOR SPARE PARTS. CUSTOMER CARE SAID THEY WOULD CALL ME BACK 8 TIMES, ONLY 1 RETURN CALL RECEIVED.
ENGINEER VISITED 6.1.93 SYSTEM BOARD REPLACED
ITEM FAILED 15.2.93
CONTACTED CUSTOMER CARE
14 TELEPHONE CALLS MADE
CUSTOMER CARE SAID THEY WOULD CALL ME BACK 6 TIMES
NO CALLS RETURNED
ON LAST CALL TO CUSTOMER CARE PRIOR TO 30.4.93 WAS ADVISED SPARES
AVALIABLE AND WOULD CALL FRIDAY 30.4.93.
1st TELEPHONE CALL 30.4.93 ADVISED ENGINEER ON HIS WAY
2nd CALL STILL ON WAY
3rd CALL WOULD BE ON SITE WITHIN 2 HOURS
NO VISIT RECEIVED
CALLED CUSTOMER CARE 4.5.93 ADVISED SPARES NOT AVALIABLE THIS WAS
THEN CORRECTED AND ENGINEER WOULD VISIT WITHOUT FAIL 7.5.93.
CALLED CUSTOMER CARE 7.5.93 13.50PM ADVISED ENGINEER ON WAY
CALLED 16.00PM ADVISED ENGINEER STILL ON WAY BUT WOULD CHASE AND
RING ME BACK AT 17.15PM.
NO CALL RECEIVED.
CALLED CUSTOMER CARE AT 17.20PM ADVISED ENGINEER WOULD STILL VISIT
NO VISIT RECEIVED
Ok, so let's have a look at this and see what I can remember. (Uh, oh!). First thing you'll notice is that amount of phone calls, first 12 then later 14. The reason why? You might think I was phonespamming but not in this case -- you see "customer care" (if they even picked up the phone; some of those 12/14 calls weren't even answered from memory) would always say "We'll call you back" or "We'll get back to you" or "We'll call you back in a few minuites" or "We'll call you back right away". Cue long wait as you realise they don't, you then call again and you get another load of "We'll call back right away". Et cetera.
Underneath the printed text above all in capitals there's another slightly scrawled hand written note, presumably made my parents I don't know now. Here's what it says; note that this is I think maybe either a few weeks or months on from the above.
Monday 10th Called Customer Service at 09.05. No reason could be given as to why no visit made. Would call me back when reason found. No return call made.
Contacted Customer Care again. Spoke to [name deleted]. Apparently my visit request removed from system, but would chase for reason.
Received call from [name deleted] 0293 . 651355 of Wang.
Apparently they have had no request to repair my Unit.
But Wang have ordered new Mother Board and will call before visit.
This means weeks of waiting for nothing.
Suggest customer care is totally useless.
Well, looks like I'm onto a winner. Finally, after calling and getting fobbed off with non-existant visits I actually get a call back.
Excepct -- they never showed up.
After this point my memory goes pretty hazy. I think in the interim time while this was all going on I might possibly have used and old second hand IBM-Compatible XT for a time. We're not talking much -- 10MB Hard drive, 8086 CPU@4.77Mhz, 512K Ram, 5.14" Floppy, Green screen, CGA Video. Might've even been made by philips, I can't remember.
However all of this does have an ending, a postscript.
I can't be sure exactly and best guess would be late '93 or early '94 but eventually - and this I do remember - calling up commodore themselves. I forget exactly where I got their number from but it might have been from one of the manuals I got with the computer. I can't remember.
After I called them up - and remember, this was an international call as well (Commodore USA; I'm in the UK) I managed to get through and was told that I should really call someone closer, i.e. someone in the UK. I then went through and explained my situation to them on the phone.
A few days later, an engineer turned up. He said very little, he took away my base unit (The amiga 1500) and chaned it for another one. And that - as it might seem - was that.
Except it wasn't.
Some years later - around the mid to late 90s I was working at a small computer company. The job was terrible - really terrible I would not wish that job on anyone. Only minimal advantage was getting a slight discount on computer parts, but that "advantage" pretty much was nullified.
Back in the mid-late 90s you see most people in the UK were just starting to buy PCs. I got my first brand new PC at about the same time. Not much spec wise; we're talking a 386DX40 with 4MB of RAM and ISA VGA video, 210MB Hard drive and 2 speed CDROM. Talk about a power tower, eh? :)
But most people were getting rid of amiga stuff left right and centre back then. Most (if not all) the amiga magzines had folded (no pun intended); commodore was well and truly dead having been bought by (I think) escom (who later vanished). Suffice to say that Amiga hardware was going dirt cheap. At this point I remember buying an accelerator card for my Amiga 1500.
So I bought the card, read the manual put it in the computer and - nothing. Ok, check it over is it in ok? All the jumpers (on the card) ok? Yep all's right all is there. Look on the disk, that's all set up ok. No joy whatsoever, no life no nothing. From memory (I can't recall either) it either did nothing or left me with a totally blank screen.
Then I sent the accelerator card back to the company (no not the above one!) from where I'd bought it from. They checked it over - left right up down centre you name it they checked it. A week later I got it back and they told me they'd tried it in just about every way possible and it worked fine.
It's at this point I noticed one other thing with my "replaced" Amiga 1500. It had - on its bottom - had 4 rather thin cork feet stuck onto it. I've never seen an amiga with those on before. Yes, you guessed right. Commodore/WTS/Wang had left me with one more problem that they never fixed. Sometime later I found out that the amiga's CPU slot (forget its exact name) was dead. Faulty.
And those cork feet? That's because the unit wasn't new, it was second hand. So they'd replaced a dead amiga with a half dead second hand amiga. Hmm.
Tospots!
Unfortunatly I don't have that amiga any more. Makes me wonder just what using an accelerator card on an amiga was really like (never tried it). After getting the 386 I just seemed to have ended up sticking with PCs until we get to today where I'm now running slackware (a Gnu/Linux distro) on my PC.. :) !
I'm still waiting for that engineer though.
SP
SP
SP