Happy Endings

It’s always nice to hear about a company that provides an unusually high level of customer service, and when I do, I like to pass the news along so that the company’s efforts are rewarded. Reader Tom DeBoni sent this to us a few weeks ago after having a good experience with Questronex, Inc:

I recently came across a new need I didn’t know I couldn’t fill. I solved a problem with the help of some friendly and helpful folks at a company called Questronex, and I’d like to let others know about the problem, the company, and their product.

I wanted to run A/UX from a small partition on a hard disk dedicated to doing only that. This is necessary, as the A/UX Startup app wants to run from a very vanilla system – anything added to it will likely prevent it from working. But, I also wanted to be able to run a full blown Mac System 6.0.5 from another partition of the same disk. In spite of the advent of System 7, I still need the old system often enough to want to keep it handy. I had thought the Startup Device control panel would give me the ability to switch boot partitions at will, but I was wrong. Turns out that the control panel allows only the choice of a physical device; which partition of the chosen device is used depends on the way the drive and its software are designed. I had received the Questronex hard disk formatting software with a 300 MB drive I’d ordered for running A/UX, and during the setup of the drive, this problem came up.

I had no trouble using an early (and free) version of Questronex StorageWare to format and partition the drive, setting it up for both A/UX and the Mac System, but StorageWare didn’t address the startup partition problem. I was stymied. So, I contacted the vendor of the software and they gave me some good advice: get a goodie they were developing. I did and it worked.

The people at Questronix were very friendly and helpful, explaining the nature of my problems, and sending me the software I needed as part of an upgrade to StorageWare.

The new version of their product is called StorageWare 4.0, and it is similar to LaCie’s SilverLining, but has a better interface. I used StorageWare to set up my drive, updated the driver with StorageWare 4.0, and now use the extra goodie they sent me, the StorageWare Assistant control panel, to choose a boot partition. Both the application and the control panel have many features I’m not mentioning here. The software comes with a manual that does a fair job of documenting the product’s features. The control panel allows the specification of passwords and write-protection for selected partitions, among other things.

I can’t quote a price for their stuff, as I got it free with a drive, but it’s worth any reasonable price. I recommend these folks highly, if you’re looking for an aftermarket SCSI utility!

Questronex, Inc.
1050 Calle Negocio
San Clemente, CA 92672
Phone: 714/498-5154
Fax: 714/498-7825

Information from:
Tom DeBoni — [email protected]