<P>A hallowed tradition in the computer industry is the buck passing game hardware and software vendors play to avoid their support responsibilities. "Sorry, that's a software problem, so we can't help you" the computer manufacturer will tell you even when they're the ones who sold you the software. "There must be a problem with your hardware," the software publisher will say rather try to fix one of their bugs. A hallowed tradition in the computer industry is the buck passing game hardware and software vendors play to avoid their support responsibilities. “Sorry, that’s a software problem, so we can’t help you” the computer manufacturer will tell you even when they’re the ones who sold you the software. “There must be a problem with your hardware,” the software publisher will say rather try to fix one of their bugs. But one reader recently found that hardware component manufacturers can play that game too.The reader was writing to me in response to my recent story about an Averatec customer who was refused support on the free Vista upgrade. The reader sympathized with the Averatec customer’s plight. “Support for anything from the computer manufacturer is always problematic,” the reader wrote. “They get something cheap by agreeing to support it, but they really have no way of doing so.”By way of illustration, the reader described a situation he and his company have run into with the Tyan motherboards that they use. “Most recently I was having trouble with the built-in Silicon Image RAID controller on our Tyan motherboards,” the reader wrote. “Silicon Image won’t even speak to me because their deal with Tyan requires Tyan to handle all support. But when I call Tyan, they tell me they include, but don’t support, the RAID controller. So it’s there, but if it doesn’t work, too bad.” Because the problems the reader is having with the RAID controllers are intermittent and hard to define, the reader has not been able to find any solutions in the vendors’ knowledge bases. Silicon Image might be the better source of information on the subject, but it certainly seems to the reader that Tyan should take responsibility for finding him answers, particularly since the RAID capability is one of the motherboard’s important features. “If you look at the Tyan webpage for the motherboard we use, it definitely touts the RAID support,” the reader wrote. “And it usually does work. If it were completely broken, they would probably swap out the board, but when you get into that gray area of what exactly does it support or we need it to do this and how do we accomplish this, that’s when one finds that no one will talk to you.”Speaking of no one being willing to talk to you, the Averatec customer from the previous story reports that he has had to give up. In spite of the promises Averatec officials made, even to the California Attorney General’s office, Averatec support won’t even speak to him now about the problems he’s had with Vista. Of course, he could always ask Microsoft, but you know what the answer would be. The hallowed tradition of non-support lives on.Which deadbeat vendor is denying you the support you have coming? Tell us about it by posting your comments on my website or by writing me at Foster@gripe2ed.com. Read and post comments about this story here. Technology Industry