I received an Acorn yesterday, and a few short hours later was putting it back in its box, to be returned for a refund, after suffering the most absolutely appalling "support" from the moderator of their customer forum, "cnckeith". Here's what happened:

After connecting the board to my PC, I installed the software. Which did not work.... After Setup.exe finishes, it launches the "Mill Wizard", which is their hardware configuration program. The Wizard put up a dialog telling me it could not proceed, because the firmware on the board needed to up updated. I followed the instructions to perform the update, which did not work... So, I made a post on the forum, asking how to proceed.

While I waited for a response, I decided to try un-installing and re-installing the software to a different location. I had first installed it on my E: drive. This time, I installed it on my C: drive. This time it worked, so it was clear they have a bug in their installer that does not correctly handle installing on other than the C: drive, even though the software allows it to be done. So, I made a post on the forum pointing out this problem.

Next, I tried just poking around in the software, to see what was there. I tried to get into the configuration screens, to see what options were available. But, getting into the configuration pages REQUIRES a password, and I was not given a password, nor could I find ANY mention of what the default password is, or how to change it in ANY of the many documents I had downloaded from their website. The user manual DID mention that there WAS a password, and that it could be changed by changing parameter 42. But, you can't change parameter 42 unless you HAVE the current password!

So, back to the forum, to make a post asking "What is the password"? I was directed to a 10 minute video, which I watched (even though I HATE learning by watching videos!). The video showed how to change the password by editing parameter 42, and mentioned, in passing, that the default password was "137". I decided to change the password to something I would remember. I tried SEVERAL different 3-digit values, and NONE worked. Finally, I remembered that the video showed how to enter a 4-digit value. So, I tried a 4-digit value, and it worked! So, back to the forum, to inform them that the software would NOT accept ANY 3-digit password, and was told I was wrong, and was told I shouldn't even be TRYING to change the password by editing the parameter, but should instead use the Wizard to do it! Never mind that the guy that told me this was the very same "cnckeith" who made the video showing how to do it by changing the parameter!.

So, I went to the Wizard, which is a completely separate program. I found the page that allows setting the password, and was surprised to see that it told me the current password was "1000", and that password protection was turned OFF! In fact, the password at that time was "1234", and it was very definitely turned ON! So, back to the forum to report another bug.

I started to work on figuring out how to connect the board to the machine, so I downloaded the "Acorn Specification Manual" to study the I/O specs, and make sure I understood how to connect everything without blowing something up. But, I found the diagram of the board did not match my board, and there were several inconsistencies in the document ,such as referring to the DB-25 connector as H4 on one page, and as H6 on another. Back to the forum to report that the "Specification Manual"contained several errors, and did not match the hardware I received. In response, I receive a, frankly, rather snotty message that I was obviously looking at the v2 manual, while I had a v3 board. I pointed out that I had downloaded the manual from the Acorn page of THEIR website, and was not even aware that there WERE v2 and v3 boards! This same thing happened a month ago, when I downloaded a "G-code/M-code manual" from the same page. When I raised questions about the content of that manual, which referred to sections of the document which didn't even exist, I was treated as if it were MY fault for downloading the ONLY document I could find that seemed to contain the information I needed. Interesting that today, he POSTED an updated Specification Manual with all the errors I pointed out fixed!

I moved on to trying to understand how to configure the Home/Limit switches so they all went to a single input, rather than requiring a separate input for each axis, consuming half of the very few available Acorn inputs. To, back to the forum again, to ask how to set this up. The answer from cnckeith was "Use HomeAll". NO explanation of where to "use HomeAll", or what the behavior would be. So, I asked "Where is this documented?", and "What does it do?". The response was "Search the forum", which I had already done. Searching the forum for "HomeAll" turned up exactly 4 hits, TWO of which were in MY post! The other two were totally unrelated to what I was asking.

Back to the forum again, to ask for more information, and I was told, by cnckeith, that "Perhaps the Acorn is not for you."! I asked for clarification as to why my questions were apparently considered unreasonable, and received something close to a rant,from cnckeith that the answers to my questions were "right in front of me" the whole time, and he then accused me of "throwing rocks" for reporting blatant bugs in their software and documentation.

To say I was stunned would be an understatement! Here I was TRYING to work through the installation of this board and software, running face-first into one bug after another, finding one problem after another in the documentation, getting little or no help from the Centroid "support" person, and then being told it was MY fault I couldn't make it work. I have NEVER been treated so shabbily by any of the hundreds of vendors I've worked with over the years.

I stepped away for a while, and when I came back, found the entire thread had been deleted, and my forum account closed!

Now, you could well think this was just my problem, but within a few hours I heard from several other people who were watching that thread, some of who have received or witnessed similar treatment themselves, and so far everyone I've talked agrees "cnckeith" was WAY out of line.

So, my advice is "Caveat Emptor". Take this for whatever it's worth, but If you're considering an Acorn, you might want to think twice, because without support (and that forum is your ONLY source of support for the Acorn) the hardware could well become little more than an expensive paperweight. Needless to say, neither I, nor my customers, will EVER be looking at Centroid again, nor will quite of few people I know who were planning to follow my lead.

Regards,
Ray L.