This is part question, part rant. For the life of me, I cannot get these things to save their parameters in a reliable, repeatable way.

For the newer M70x series, I can click "Save Parameters In Drive" ten times, cycle power, and still get the defaults back. Sometimes I have to repeat the "download, cycle power, check parms" ritual three or four times to get them to actually take. I don't do anything different, but I get different behaviour. How long am I supposed to wait after the "Saving" box disappears before taking power off the drive?

I've had M702s in particular forget their parameters for option cards, but retain the parameters in the drive itself. It'll remember parameters fine when powered off for a few minutes, but wait a few hours or days and they may be gone. This happens most on SI-I/O cards, but I've also had a SI-Encoder card forget its parms recently. This failure seems front-loaded: if it's going to happen, it'll happen the first time the drive is off for an extended period. If the parameters survive the first prolonged off time, they'll stay in there until the magic smoke leaks out.

For the older stuff (Mentor MP, Unidrive Classic, LS UMV 4301), they're more consistent, but I swear there must be some parameters that aren't saved when you save a menu via x.000 = 1000 followed by Stop. SM-Ethernet cards never seem to keep the static IP I assign (yes, DHCP is off) unless I go online with my laptop and save it from there. I've also had similar problems with saving Ethernet settings on M70x's via x.000, where they don't persist after a power cycle.

I have to be doing something wrong, right? There's no way people would keep buying this stuff it's really this flaky.