Calling Customer Service for bad sectors

[Kalman Reti <Reti@weser.sreti.symbolics.com>]

    Date: Sun, 20 Nov 88 14:11:25 CST
    From: forbus@p.cs.uiuc.edu (Kenneth Forbus)


    This is the kind of answer I find depressing when I consider the future
    of Symbolics.  
This is the kind of answer I find depressing when I consider the future of
Symbolics' customers. :->
		   Every other computer I own, from PC's to workstations, has
    included in the system software utilities for fixing bad sectors, reformatting
    disks, etc.  
The formatting utility is shipped with the system; it is the "disk restore"
command in the FEP.  There is also a utility in 7.2 that can mark a particular
block or track bad (called SI:FIX-FEP-BLOCK).
		 Not Symbolics.  Oh, no.  Instead, I am supposed to pay
    $2K minimum to have someone from Symbolics drive into town (if, indeed,
    there is still Symbolics service personnel within driving distance after
    the layoffs) and do it for me.  This is ridiculous.  
The original report sounded like a hardware problem, i.e. the actuator was
mispositioning the head.  In the circumstances, suggesting a hardware repair
person seemed perfectly appropriate to me.

    Why doesn't Symbolics make available to its customers such utilities?
Which utilities do you want that aren't supplied (the ones you mention explicitly
above are supplied)?

[BTW, these are my personal observations, not an official Symbolics representation.]