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beanman · Jun 10, 2003, 05:54 PM

In an experiment, I installed 10.2.6 onto my old beige G3 and am now letting my roommate use it as he has no computer to allow him access to the outside world. There is a high pitched noise that comes out of it now which is hard to localize when I put my ear up to it. I have two theories of what my problem is with it. A)The cooling fan is starting to go out, or B)the hard drive is about to bite the dust.

The best way I can describe the sound is that it sounds like a hearing test tone, but is sustained and can be fairly annoying. If you tap the enclosure, you can sometimes stop it, but it tends to come back. It also disappears when you put the computer to sleep, but I've never stuck around long enough to see if it comes back on in that mode.

Any ideas as to the answer to the problem and possible solutions to save it? If worst comes to worst, I'll drop a new fan or hard drive into it, but thought I'd see if I can save myself a little headache before I throw down any money at the thing. Once that happens, I'll probably start upgrading the processor as well. I have yet to really go to town with some compressed air, but will do that soon enough.

tiborg · Jun 10, 2003, 06:14 PM

Power up the machine with the cover off, that should let you hear exactly where the sound is coming from.

Gene Jockey · Jun 10, 2003, 08:13 PM

That sound is the computer's wail of anguish for you having to suffer. 10.2.6 is slow on that machine.

My guess is the HD. Try powering up the machine w/ the HD power unplugged. Still there? Otherwise blow out the PSU and see if the noise goes away. The PSU in my G3 would get really dusty really fast. Maybe the fan's coated and doing strange things.

Good luck...

--Josh

SMacTech · Jun 11, 2003, 09:32 AM

A hard drive with noisy bearings is probably the culprit and has no bearing <pun intended> on impending failure. My pismo's hd has whined like a little biatch since day one and still is working just fine, some 4 years later. The fact that you can tap on the machine and it changes may indicate that it is a mechanical vibration somewhere.

OreoCookie · Jun 11, 2003, 09:48 AM

Open it, detach the power of the harddrive and boot from a CD.

If the noise is still there, it's not the harddrive. If it isn't, your harddrive is about to die (I would think that it's your hd).

If your hd is dying, buy a new one and back up all data immediately (or copy your data onto another drive in any way).

beanman · Jun 11, 2003, 10:01 PM

I got a can of compressed air and blew out the fan portion of the machine. I remembered that when I was using this as my primary machine some months ago that I had this same problem. I blew the sucker out while off and then while it was on, just to make sure that I could get any moving parts cleaned off of dust. After a huge cloud of dust and an overnight power down, the sound seems to have gone away for the most part.

I would think that if it does come back, the HD is going to go. It would make sense as the thing is nearly five years old. At the sametime, it's only a 4GIG HD, so if it goes, I'll gladly get a new one. Good news is that there isn't anything of importance on the machine.