Mike,
I do try not to be arrogant or abusive.
however if you go back through all of the posts here you will fined about 1/4 or more are from people who have not read the instruction that came with their mower, let alone the service manual.
In most cases most people can nut out the problem if they are pointed in the right direction and the first step is to "Read the Manual".
So if the first responce is to point the poster to where the factory has hidden the manual, that is a good response.
With out trying to demean the OP, he opens his aggressively worded response with the words "overpriced manual".
The manual Mark sent him to was a free download so it is obviously the OP did not ACT upon the information he was given but simply REACTED to the post .
My follow up post opend with the comment that the OP had not actually done what Mark had suggested, no abusive adjectives nor demeaning terms.
This then followed with some information about how the "mystery box" works and some common problems with set ups.
I then further asked for the minimum information , serial & model numbers and explained why we need them & how we can use them to help the OP.
The closing comment was critical and possible a little abrupt but all of the trade people on this list give a lot of valuable time that they could be using in their shops to make some money and they give it for free. We don't do it to boost our own self esteem nor feed out egos .
You will note the lack of the words "I" & "MY" suggesting ownership of secret information & skills and most common to responses from ego boosters.
Some posters come to this list looking for a fight or expection some one to tell them to turn screw 1 to the left 3 times, stick tab "C" into slot "F" and all your problems are solved.
However it does not work like that. No two breakdowns are identical and no two posters have the same skill sets &/or knowledge. Further more the cause of the problem is just as important as the fix. No good telling some one how to fix something if their misuse is causing the problem.
I for one am here to learn, the problems that come up here and the solutions that are eventually found could walk into my shop any day of the week so it actually adds substantially to my "experience & knowledge base" .
I came here originally out of frustration from trying to find service information from the local distributors.
Each and every person sees things differently and will read into any comment whatever their pet peeve is. that is a simple fact of life.
However before you attack those trying to help you might like to review the the entire post.
If you do so while trying to be objective you will note that the OP has still not divulged the information he was asked for.
SO he has either worked it out himself and not bothered to to let others know, which is selfish to the extreme or has gone elsewhere.