19 Jul
2002
19 Jul
'02
4:27 a.m.
Everything you say about the difficulty of getting SGI phone support over
the hotline (800-800-4SGI) is quite true -- it is engineered to be that
way. However...
I'm an ex-SGI Systems Engineer. The Systems Engineers are part of the
Sales division, and as such are charged with (my words) being "very
friendly and supportive of ANYONE interested in SGI stuff". Obviously this
has limits, as SEs tend to be quite busy (especially now, as there are
fewer of them). But here's the trick to getting great, interested personal
support: get friendly with your local SGI Systems Engineer. S/He will be
(generally) very interested in your call and problem, and won't (generally)
even bother asking for serial numbers, etc. In my experience working at
SGI, the SEs were a very dedicated, helpful and knowledgeable lot. And
believe me, SEs have access to a *LOT* of information buried inside the
company (including knowing who the old-timers are, etc). I miss that easy
access to info...
Mark Grieshaber
mvg1(a)earthlink.net
On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 05:36:21PM +0000, Pete Turnbull wrote:
On Jul 18, 11:55, Dan Wright wrote:
Robert F Schaefer said:
>
> What kind of pain? An arbitrary `NO', or just following the finger-
> pointing to the right desk? If I knew I'd just get the former I
wouldn't
> bother, but the latter I could deal with to
get some info on my 4D/35.
It's pretty much the latter.
[...]
You
can't really get into their system without a supported system serial #.
You
could always try giving them the serial for your
4D/35 -- who knows,
someone
might (accidently) still be paying maintenace on
it :)
I'm afraid my experience (in the UK) is similar to Dan's. If you try to
call SGI nowadays, you won't get far without a support contract and a
serial number to match. Otherwise, you tend to just get referred to sales,
who will try to sell you support (or an OS upgrade or whatever) if the
machine is recent enough to be supportable.
You might have some luck if you can find someone with a support contract
who regularly sees the engineer. The older ones tend to be quite
knowledgable and may even have worked on such a system or know someone who
has -- and might put you in touch.
Otherwise, the best resources are the comp.sys.sgi.* newsgroups, which are
fairly active and populated by a number of SGI employees as well as
enthusiasts.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York