Span PCI boards in UMax clones
L. Voytershark
February 18, 1997

Problem Presented

The following problem was presented:
Loading Scinet Lan installer 2.0 on Supermac Umax powermac clone and scinet configuration always locks when entering subnet name .
Also, in general, the mac is locking when trying to launch any span s/w.
Cust disconnected span bd from network to prevent lock ups.(Ver 7.5.5 Using Scinet span pro 1.0.) Main questionis " Are clones supported?" Any Suggestions?

Answer

Overview
Please note that the official stance on clones is that we cannot be responsible
for proving or disproving the ability of Span/Lan to work with a clone. It is up
to the customer to go to the Clone manufacturer if it works with equivalent Mac
machines.

However I will continue to pass on information of "known" issues.
It appears that the UMax clone machines that have more than 3 PCI slots cannot
see the board correctly if the board is located in other than one of the first
three slots down from the top. I have two confirmations from engineers that even
though they were able to pass diagnostics on the board, they had a lock up on
typing in the LAN in SciNet Configuration. In both cases moving the board up
into one of the top three slots worked. One engineer remarked that it was not
even necessary to reload Lan Installer SW when that board switch was made.

I've heard (but not confirmed) that the legitimate PCI clone machines have 3 PCI
slots and the other slots have somehow "adapted" to work as PCI slots... this
could explain the problem and it's concievable that UMax in particular has the
issue with how they created those extra slots.

As of yet I have no complaints from Power Computing machines.

OFFICIAL R&D STATEMENT RE: CLONES WITH SPAN/LAN
Span Pro runs ok on my older Power Computing clone (basically an 8100/100
equivalant, with nuBus). However, I've heard many trouble reports about Span
Pro running on clones, most of which I assume are PCI-based. We don't test
Span Pro with clones so we can't guarantee its success with clones. Also, our
programmers can't troubleshoot when problems are reported, since we don't have
clones in our lab.

Best policy is to run Span Pro on true Apple Macs.
If a customer desires to run Span Pro on a clone, they should also possess the
closest equivalent true Apple Macintosh. If they have a problem with the
clone, then they can also try Span Pro on the Apple Mac. If it fails on the
Apple Mac, report the problem to Scitex (it has nothing to do with clones). If
it works ok with the Apple Mac, but fails on the clone, then report it to the
clone vendor. OK?

But again, to summarize, we've had several reports of people having problems
running Span Pro on clones, so they are NOT RECOMMENDED.