WD2010 group buy, call for ORDER and $$$

[Thad P Floryan]

One person has expressed a "compatibility" concern regarding use of the WD2010
in early-model UNIXPCs.

The information I have from Western Digital claims "The WD2010 is designed to
be software compatible with the WD1010."

The WD2010 has additional ECC circuity, but the diagrams show the ECC (Error
Correction and Control) logic conected only on the internal bus on the chip.
The block and system diagrams from Western Digital for both the WD1010 and
WD2010 are identical except for the extra ECC "module" in the WD2010.

The WD2010 also has an "active" pin 4, but I can find nothing on the UNIXPC
motherboard that connects to it.  This observation is also confirmed by the
UNIXPC schematics which show nothing connected to pin 4 on the WD1010/WD2010.

Further examination (again) of the schematic diagrams for the UNIXPC motherboard
revisions D, F and J, reveals no differences in the circuitry flanking the
WD1010. 

However, information received from another source claims a problem with:

"	... OLD 7300 with 1/2 meg of RAM.  Several people have told me
	the old computer will have collisions between the 2 error correcting
	systems and will not work at all!  Perhaps you could remove the old
	error chips from the motherboard to get around this problem.  The newer
	versions of the computer do not seem to be affected.
"

As stated previously, the systems I've tested have ALL identified themselves by
"P3...P5" or "P5.1" upon boot, and have all worked fine with the WD2010,
including one "old" 7300 with 1/2 of RAM.  If anyone in the Silicon Valley or
San Francisco Peninsula area has a system that identifies itself as something
other than "P3...P5" or "P5.1", I'd like to take a look at it and run some tests
if a meeting can be arranged.  If a problem is discovered, it's likely a simple
solution can be found.  Please send email to arrange a test date/time/whatever.

And one note about email: some people have claimed they cannot reach me by
simply "reply"ing using their mail reader.  This is true, as examination of the
bounced mail (forwarded to me and PORTAL by others) has shown; I've had the same
problem attempting to contact others by simply using "reply".  What appears to
be happening is that some site(s) is(are) munging the mail paths, rendering them
usuable for use replying to email.  Everyone who has explicitly used one of the
paths as shown in my "signature" (at the END of email) has been able to get
through, and I've verified that by doing the same to email to which I've replied
and which previously bounced it will also NOW get through.  If you're using the
"bang" paths to contact me, please be sure to include the last part as shown;
some people are apparently omitting the "..!cup.portal.com" part.  I've been
assured the two addresses in my signature are the correct AND registered
addresses, and I've also been assured that PORTAL does update its maps monthly.

And for those who've ordered the s4diag disk along with the WD2010 chip(s),
I've been mailing the disks out the day the orders come in (because I just KNOW
I'm going to be "busy" when the chips themselves arrive here next week! :-)

And I also now know why some people order from their banks the rubber stamps
that say "For Deposit Only to the Account Of ..."; sheesh, I *KNEW* I forgot
to do something!  :-)  :-)

Thad Floryan [ thad at cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]