Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Well, I guess I blew it in .0...  The price quoted for the C. Ltd
    20 meg HD kit is for the drive only.  The SCSI adapter is extra.
    
    Also, I called Abels, and the price for a Microbotics packed with
    2 megabytes is $425.00, which is the best price I've seen yet. 
    Their software prices are generally very low.

re:	.1

numbers seem to keep changing.....

I spoke to Abel's today (617/428-5100) and he told me that the
Starboard-2 is $430.32 + shipping. They will have 8 more of them tomorrow.

The C. Ltd. 20mb disk is $791 (including controller) and they won't have them
in for another 2 weeks or so.

One good thing to note, they plug each of the Starboards into their
Amiga and run the Memory Diagnostic on it before shipping it out.. alot
less likely to get a lemon. They guy was REAL helpful and will be sending
me a complete price list (I'll post the highlights).

Oh yea... they're using the Fujitsu RAM chips which they have been real
	  happy with.

    Wow!  If the C Ltd. is really $791.00 complete, I guess I'll go
    for it.  Anyone know if there are any timing problems while using
    a SCSI board AFTER a Starboard2 on the 68000 buss?  If anyone else
    calls Abel, would you please throw that question at him?

re:	.2

Well I ordered the Starboard-II with 2MB from Abels, got it, never bothered
with the memory testing program that comes with it (since you have to boot
1.1) and was up and running with the ASDG-RRD.

Great stuff! Until the RRD started to choke on "Bad Sectors" and Marauder-II
started crashing when it tried to read a whole disk into memory. So I ran
the "diagnostics" which said SOMETHING was wrong. To give you an idea how
bad these "diagnostics" were, I wound up writing my own in (gack) BASIC (for
flexibility).

It turned out the from 1.0 meg to 1.5 meg all ODD addressed bytes were comming
back as 0xFF no matter WHAT you stored in them!

I called Abel's today, told them the problem and also told them that
I've become addicted to the extra 2MB. They said that they'd ship out a new
box tomorrow UPS RED LABEL (one day service) at no charge to me (they won't
have any in stock until tomorrow). Note that they did NOT require me to send
the first box back first!

For a discount place I am VERY impressed.. stay tuned to see how it all turns
out!

dave

(How am I going to live for another 3 days without my 2 megs!! :-)

    re: .2
    
    	It seems the actual phone number for Able Supply is:
    
    		(615)428-5100  (ie. not 617 area code)
    
    	The woman who answered the 617 number seems to have gotten 
    	a lot of calls for Abel lately.  I wonder how that happened? '-)

    
	BTW, Abel now has a 30Meg version of C Ltd's Amega hard disk 
    	w/controller for the reasonable price of $939.48
	
	I've just ordered the Starboard 2 meg board from them.  I've
    	heard such great things that I couldn't resist the $430.32 price.
    
    -- Steve
    

    Has anyone attempted to call Abel lately?  He seems to be VERY busy.
    Annoyingly so...  If you get thru tell him I want to talk to him.
    
    ;') Bruce

    I've been on their BBS. If you read some of the msgs there, people
    are starting to revolt from them. Order delivery times are lagging,
    and as you mentioned it's almost impossible to get through on the
    voice line. Many people are threatening to start posting derogatory
    messages about Abel on other systems if service isn't improved in
    the very near future.

    It's kind of funny... Abel had such low prices and fast delivery
    that word spread like wildfire.  Now, business is so good, that
    noone can buy anything from them.  I've heard that shipping time
    has increased from days to weeks.

    I've had the same experience.  Two or three weeks ago I tried calling them
    about 40 times and never got through.  I did get on the BBS by luck
    early on a Saturday morning and placed my order and then sent a letter
    requesting that they tell me everything is okay.  I've heard nothing
    yet and have been strongly considering cancelling my order.  If
    you can't talk to them to order something, just imagine how hard it's
    going to be go get it fixed if it breaks.
                     

I have found it impossible to get through to Abel's voice line as well.
However, I have found their service to be as prompt as ever.  I have
ordered three things from them in the last month, two of the items
came in the minimum time that the shipping method would allow.

I suspect that the delayed orders are due to items being out of stock.
Like the busy phone line, this is another sign of too much success,
and there is little that Abel can do remedy that situation: they can
not ship items until their suppliers can deliver the merchandise to
them.  However, Abel does have one vast advantage over almost all
the mail order outfits I have dealt with (both when buying computer
and non-computer merchandise): Abel does not charge your credit card
until they ship the item.

Anyone get the idea that Abel wasn't prepared for all this success?
I have the feeling that they were not expecting to go national yet
since they have never advertised.

Maybe the idea of spreading bad reports of Abel is a good idea.  It means
I'll be able to order from them whenever I want.  Yeah, humm, that's the
ticket.  Yeah, did I mention that they overcharged my bill $120,000.  Yeah,
and they came to my house and blew up my car.  And letter bombs in the mail
once they get your address, yeah, they have one mailing list that you don't
want to get on...  Morgan Fairchild is my wife, yeah...

I too have been trying to call them since last Friday without success. Yesterday
a left a question on their BBS, but it wasn't answered by this morning.  If you
can't get through on the voice line, how can you find out if something is in
stock?
	Paul

    But isn't it comforting to know that there are enough Amiga users out
    there to keep Abel so busy?  

    Hope they can get it together soon, someday soon I'm going to want
    to buy a couple of megs from them.
    
    Gary