Callan Unistar 200 problems

[Ron Dunant]

[]
We at Callan are proud of the products we ship.  We have well over 1000
units in the field to date, and yes there are problems.  We try our best
to address customer issues that are brought to our attention.

I by no means think that support should be handled on the net in this
manner, but feel the need to set Mr. White's one sided *story* straight.
I suggest that in the future Mr. White contact Callan Data System's
customer support group in a professional and business-like manner
representative of the professional organization he is a part of.  If Mr.
White would have only listened to our answers, his article and my response
would have been unnecessary.  Mr. White's article appears here in its
entirety.

>>  This article is to warn others of the problems encountered with a Callan
>>  Unistar 200 running UN*X System V.  We purchased a Unistar 200 from BMDP
>>  StatCat.  The documentation was incredibly poor, with numerous serious
>>  mistakes.

First I would like to point out that Mr. White purchased a Unistar 200 with
a preliminary version of UNIX (not UN*X) System V.  Updates for preliminary
software started to ship in mid June; I might add the update consisted of
minor software changes.  Why Mr. White has not as yet received his update
has been taken up with BMDP.  We have completed a revision of the documentation
for the Unistar 200 and are preparing to ship updates of same.  It should be
noted that with all of Mr. White's talk about 'incredibly poor documentation'
that he pointed out only four inconsistencies.  We rely on customer feedback
to help improve our products and documentation.  We found two way communication
very difficult with Mr. White.

>>  In addition:
>>   1) the a, i, and c commands in ex cause a core dump;

Yes, we knew that.  Even before contact with Mr. White the bug was reported
to Unisoft.  In the most recent release sent to us by Unisoft, the ex bugs
are fixed.  The version of vi we received was broken along the way, but ex
does work (vi and ex are linked).

>>   2) uucp does not talk to 4.2bsd machines;

This is correct.  We recreated the problem and reported the bug to Unisoft.
Excluding 4.2bsd machines, our implementation of uucp works without problems.
Unisoft has notified us that they have found and fixed the problem and will
supply an update this week.

>>   3) no means to generate nroff printer driving tables is provided;

AT&T has never written any documentation on nroff printer driver tables that
I know of.  There has been conversation regarding this on the net, but we have
no immediate way of helping Mr. White.  Judging from the fact that Mr. White
posted his *article* about Callan, he must *know* how to use the net so we
suggest that he explore net.wanted.

>>   4) the f77 compiler (from Absoft) is totally unreliable.
>>
>>  Specific problems with FORTRAN are:
>>   1) bad code is generated;
>>   2) numerous deviations from the ANSI standard, usually significant;
>>   3) does not use the floating point processor as documented.

Mr. White sent five short FORTRAN programs to our customer support group.  Two
problems were due to Mr. White not reading his manual; one was a 'feature';
and two were bugs which I might add are fixed in the current FORTRAN release.
As far as Mr.  White's accusation that the compiler produces 'bad code'
(depending on one's definition of bad code), he has yet to supply us with any
evidence of bad code.  In reality, the code generated by the compiler is NOT
too bad.

As for the 'numerous deviations from the ANSI standard', we never advertised
that our FORTRAN was ANSI compatible, it is an ANSI implementation.  If Mr.
White would have read his FORTRAN manual more carefully, he would have noticed
Appendix J [CLEARLY marked] DEVIATIONS FROM ANSI FORTRAN 77.  This appendix
supplies a list of unimplemented features (total of 6), restrictions (total
of 7), and enhancements.  I might add that the unimplemented features and
limitations are relatively minor.

There were problems with Mr. White's FORTRAN release when used with the
floating point processor.  BMDP should not have sold Mr. White a floating
point processor to use with his FORTRAN software, as we knew that it did not
work.  As a matter of fact, BMDP is no longer a Callan distributor.

>>  In response to numerous phone calls, plus now nasty letters, we get the
>>  run around (that's a System V problem, etc. etc.).
>>
>>  Besides all this, the hard disk (43M) has begun to suffer from bad blocks.
>>
>>  Let potential buyers beware.
>>     Gary C. White (lanl!gcw, csu-cs!csufwb!gcw)

Considering that Mr. White's contact with Callan Data Systems and its
associates is exemplified by his article posted on the net, I wish to rest
Callan's case regarding attempted dealings with him.  To answer Mr. White's
last complaint in the article regarding bad blocks, which I might add he has
not previously communicated to anyone at Callan:  I suggest that he try the
'markbad' program.  Every now and then a disk can 'suffer from bad blocks',
and the markbad program will map the bad blocks to a known good area.  If Mr.
White's bad block problem continues, we can easily repair his hard disk.

In closing, I would like to point out that anyone with a Unisoft port will
have most of the same problems that Mr. White has experienced.  As for the
FORTRAN compiler, had Mr. White purchased our software maintenance agreement
as we suggested he do, he would have been entitled to software and
documentation updates at no charge.  For Mr. White that would have meant the
latest Absoft release with bug fixes (no known problems with floating point
processor support) AND Absoft's 100% ANSI FORTRAN 77 (when released).

Anyone who has had any experience at all with UNIX realizes that problems such
as those brought up by Mr. White are not uncommon, nor can they be solved over
night.

                           Ron Dunant @ Callan Data Systems Engineering
                           2645 Townsgate Road
                           Westlake Village, CA   91361

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Unistar is a registered trademark of Callan Data Systems