I'm on my 3rd Xbox 360. I run a data center, and am pretty careful
about disk handling, cooling and clean power. But the worst part
of this little episode has been the ability of ALL three of the
(new) 360's to put scratches in $60 disks. I'm on the 3rd Oblivion
Disk (all have been scratched into uselessness) and they've also
screwed up 2 Ultimate Alliances. Manager at MicroCenter is willing
to replace them - not everyone will be so lucky.
Replacing scratched DVD's is expensive, and not always possible without
re-buying them. Hard to believe that 3 out of 3 Oblivion disks were
(originally) defective, and 2 out of 2 Ultimate Alliance. Halo 2
also crapped out.
Is this their master plan?
Thanks for the info here. The original post was meant to be brief not cryptic:
Our Dell 1950's came preinstalled with 64-bit SLES 9. Trouble started when we
loaded one of our system images on an application partition and tried to run
it. No dice - too many 32/64 bit problems. No problem we thought, we'll just
install 32-bit SLES 9 and port things over gradually (problems were mainly with
Oracle and Java). Called Dell about loading the 32-bit version - this is where
the trouble started: they said the hardware wasn't 'certified' for 32-bit linux.
We work for an branch of the govt. related to air travel; our software configurations
are formally scrutinized and approved or rejected by an outside organization every
two years. We have 9 years of system images that can be used on any of our hardware -
the access to the filesystem is abstracted at the deviced driver level, and we
can freely move images between machines if we need them to take on new identities.
Unfortunately, with our batch of Dell 1950's, Dell isn't supplying a 32-bit version
of either SLES or RHES. So, to get to the disks with a 'Dell Ceritified' OS, we have
to use the 64-bit version. Our system image collection has now branched into two
forks - one 32-bit and one 64-bit.
The machines are frisky, and the blue lights are cool, but they are releasing
machines 'certified' for linux but that use CLOSED binaries for the SCSI components,
hence the pain.
thanks to all for their comments.
Sadly there is trouble with Dell hardware/software even in their 'big business' server sales. We recently bought $60,000 worth of hardware from them - first time our group
bought from Dell, and got machines with closed source, YOU CAN'T RELOAD THE OS WITHOUT
OUR PROPRIETARY BINARIES software. After talking to some very responsive people in
tech support (and politely explaining that we wouldn't buy Dells again without a test
machine) they told us that the problem was the LSI SCSI controller software. Different
customer service people (all of whom were polite and seemed to listen) kept asking us
about the customer satisfaction rating we gave (2 out of 10), but were unable to
dig up a 32-bit version of the OS we wanted to run on our Xeon 1950's. Hadn't been
certified. They don't quite get it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm on my 3rd Xbox 360. I run a data center, and am pretty careful about disk handling, cooling and clean power. But the worst part of this little episode has been the ability of ALL three of the (new) 360's to put scratches in $60 disks. I'm on the 3rd Oblivion Disk (all have been scratched into uselessness) and they've also screwed up 2 Ultimate Alliances. Manager at MicroCenter is willing to replace them - not everyone will be so lucky. Replacing scratched DVD's is expensive, and not always possible without re-buying them. Hard to believe that 3 out of 3 Oblivion disks were (originally) defective, and 2 out of 2 Ultimate Alliance. Halo 2 also crapped out. Is this their master plan?
Thanks for the info here. The original post was meant to be brief not cryptic: Our Dell 1950's came preinstalled with 64-bit SLES 9. Trouble started when we loaded one of our system images on an application partition and tried to run it. No dice - too many 32/64 bit problems. No problem we thought, we'll just install 32-bit SLES 9 and port things over gradually (problems were mainly with Oracle and Java). Called Dell about loading the 32-bit version - this is where the trouble started: they said the hardware wasn't 'certified' for 32-bit linux. We work for an branch of the govt. related to air travel; our software configurations are formally scrutinized and approved or rejected by an outside organization every two years. We have 9 years of system images that can be used on any of our hardware - the access to the filesystem is abstracted at the deviced driver level, and we can freely move images between machines if we need them to take on new identities. Unfortunately, with our batch of Dell 1950's, Dell isn't supplying a 32-bit version of either SLES or RHES. So, to get to the disks with a 'Dell Ceritified' OS, we have to use the 64-bit version. Our system image collection has now branched into two forks - one 32-bit and one 64-bit. The machines are frisky, and the blue lights are cool, but they are releasing machines 'certified' for linux but that use CLOSED binaries for the SCSI components, hence the pain. thanks to all for their comments.
Sadly there is trouble with Dell hardware/software even in their 'big business' server sales. We recently bought $60,000 worth of hardware from them - first time our group bought from Dell, and got machines with closed source, YOU CAN'T RELOAD THE OS WITHOUT OUR PROPRIETARY BINARIES software. After talking to some very responsive people in tech support (and politely explaining that we wouldn't buy Dells again without a test machine) they told us that the problem was the LSI SCSI controller software. Different customer service people (all of whom were polite and seemed to listen) kept asking us about the customer satisfaction rating we gave (2 out of 10), but were unable to dig up a 32-bit version of the OS we wanted to run on our Xeon 1950's. Hadn't been certified. They don't quite get it.