RE: 3M Self-Check 6210--hints, tips or tricks to making it more reliable?

["William Gray" <wgray at greenwichlibrary dot org>]

Hi Byron,

Those CPU's were actually part of the service, not upgrades, so perhaps
they were indeed refurbs as you said...

In any case, we'll likely be upgrading to newer SelfChecks in the
not-so-distant future, and based on their product's performance so far,
I'd be surprised (and appalled) if we went with 3M again. At this point,
I don't see us spending any more money on the machines we have, in terms
of upgrading equipment, but I'll try some of the tips that have been
mentioned thus far.

Regards,

--Will

-----------------------------
| Never mind that one machine has had 3 (perhaps 4--I've lost
| count) computers swapped through it because each one failed for 
| whatever reason, as well as three printers (also, could be 4...) 
| because of printer hardware failures. ...
|  One machine came with Windows 95; the other we got later and it came 
| with Win2K. The Win2K version crashed about 5 times as often as the 
| Win95, so we had that machine downgraded to Win95, which reduced the 
| number of crashes significantly.

Will, the CPUs that have been swapped in/out: were these CPUs that the
tech installed as part of your service because the previous one failed,
or were they CPU upgrades that you purchased as, well, an upgrade? I ask
because there seems to be a difference between the two. Those installed
as part of the service contract are/may be refurbs, if I remember
correctly. Those bought outright as an upgrade are new.

Here at Temple we used to have all sorts of problems with our two 6210s:
pretty much everything anyone has mentioned in this thread happened at
least twice each. CPUs were replaced under the service agreement. They'd
help for a little bit, but soon we were back to business as usual, which
was *not* a good thing. 

Even in that state, our self-checks accounted for over 50% of our
circulation in the main library, so we bit the bullet and bought
completely new innards and updated software for the machines (at
$2450/unit). The new units are Win2K.
We've not had nearly the number of problems we had before the upgrade.

I feel your pain, though. Our self-checks are immensely popular, so
additional units may certainly be in order. We'll be looking at ALL
options (i.e., companies in addition to 3M) when that time comes.

Byron

--
 Byron C. Mayes, MLS
 Head, Library Systems & Technology
 Temple University * Philadelphia, PA
 ByronC dot Mayes at temple dot edu
 Listowner, BLACK-IP: The Black Information Professionals' Network  Join
at <http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/black-ip.html>

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