Date   : Wed, 07 Mar 1984 18:10:41 EST
From   : Seymour <JOSEPH@RU-BLUE.ARPA>
Subject: Octagon Hardware

On the reality and availability of Octagon hardware:

       We in the Rutgers Microcomputer Lab had been looking for a big
hard disk system for one of our bulletin board RCP/M computers for
many moons.  We too were attracted by the glossy advertisements from
Octagon promising a complete 16Mb hard disk subsystem with BIOS for a
reasonable price.  My first call to Octagon got me copies of the
technical manuals for everything they make!  I only asked about the
hard disk subsystem for a Z80 but I got specs on their 8/16 dual
processor board and assembly listings for both their 8080 and 8088
BIOS'.  They were friendly and helpful on the phone and were at CP/M
83 (a big trade show) with some of their equipment.  After consulting
with the person who wrote their BIOS to make sure it would suit our
purpose, we ordered one.

       The Octagon Hard disk subsystem arrived in a reasonable time
but showed signs of being an early product.  The packaging was not
great.  There were no physical assembly instructions; I had to call
them to find out which cable went where and which orientation was
right for the plugs.

       There was documentation on how to install the software and
after we had followed it to the letter three or four times without
success, I called Octagon again.  They were helpful but were unable to
solve the problem over the phone.  The gentleman who wrote their BIOS
asked me to send back to whole thing and include a listing of our
original floppy BIOS (to which his was supposed to attach but didn't).
We sent the whole kit and kaboodle back to Octagon and waited.

       About a week later (rather reasonable turnaround actually) I
got a DHL courier express package with the whole subsystem in it.  It
seems our BIOS does things a little differently than Octagon had
assumed (don't they all) and their attach BIOS would not work.  They
had >rewritten< their BIOS for us and would we please test it and tell
them how it went.  I for one was surprised and pleased when we hooked
it all back up and it WORKED!  We had been playing with it for so long
without luck the first time that we were just dying to see that little
"In-use" LED light up.  Some more extended playing with the system
exposed another problem, files would disappear from the hard disk or
would fail to PIP properly.  Octagon suggested reformatting the disk
and trying again.

       Formatting the disk revealed several areas of the disk that
would not format correctly.  We suspected a bad disk until we tried
formatting the disk when the system was cold.  It seemed to format OK
cold but if the system had been on for a while, it failed.  Octagon
customer support thought it was probably a failing heat-sensitive
component on the hard disk controller board (a reasonable assumption).
They express-shipped us one the next day.  After trying the new board
and getting identical results, another call to Octagon got us a new
drive unit, again shipped overnight at no charge to us.  Exchanging
the drive has fixed the last problem and we are now revelling in the
speeds of Wordstar and Mince on hard disk.

        The whole system has been running for about a week now with
no new problems and we are very satisfied with it.  It is small, it is
fast and it works.

       Overall, I got these impressions of Octagon:

1) Yes, its a rather new product.  But, it definitely exists. They
said on the phone that they had about 25 of them successfully running
in Z80 systems.

2) They are a young company that has not reached the point of user
unfriendliness we hear about DRI or Micropro.  They are willing to help
and to spend their time and effort to get things solved.  I could
expect no better.  I personally would rather deal with a smaller
company even if it did make mistakes occasionally, than with a monster
like IBM or DEC. (which by the way have also been rumored to have made
mistakes).  

3) Anytime we had a problem, they acted responsibly and quickly to
attempt to solve it and, although we did have an unusual number of
them in installing this system, I am generally pleased by the company
and the product.

                               Seymour Joseph
                       System Programmer / Microcomputers
                             Rutgers University