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CzarDerivative · May 24, 2005, 01:18 AM

Hello,

Sooo... this huge fly landed in my cup of tea while i was drinking over my powerbook about 6 months ago and scared the crap out of me, thus causing the tea to get flung out of my cup and onto the powerbook. The tea had lots of honey in it. Needless to say, this broke some stuff. Actually it broke everything except the ram and the hard drive (thank god). So I sent the computer in for repairs and just got it back a few days ago. I've been working on a PC while the powerbook was in exile, so I kinda missed most of mac stuff thats happened while i was gone (i.e. tiger).

Anyway, I got the computer back, and everything seems to be working normalishly now.. except for the fan.... I think...

See... I remember that the powerbook was somewhat loud when I was using it... only I can't remember exactly HOW loud. The fan SEEMS to be running full blast all the time now, but I don't know if I just got used to a quieter desktop, or if the fan really is screwy.

When I got the computer back, I did a complete software update (to 10.3.9... tiger's on it's way and should be here by the end of the week), and started browsing a bit. After a few minutes (after the CPU intensive updates), i noticed that the fan was still running pretty high. I closed everything, and let the computer idle for about 20 minutes. I came back to it and the fan was still spinning at what seemed to be the fastest setting.

I searched around a bit, and I'm not sure whether this fan thing is a new hardware issue (something with the tea/honey no doubt), or a 10.3.[9/8/7] bug that's plaguing me. Did anyone else have fan issues with one of the later versions of 10.3? On a powerbook?

After a few hours I tried a hardware/fan monitoring utility to see if something was wrong. I thought maybe the temperature sensor might be damaged and might be making the computer think that it's hot as hades. Or maybe the airway is somehow restricted. I downloaded something called "Hardware Monitor" and the readings varied between 30 (after cold start) to 40 (after playing a dvd) degrees C. But apparently the app was only able to detect the hard disk temp sensor, so I have no idea (a) if those temperatures are actually considered "hot" (for a hard drive), or (b) if there's any way to access the cpu heat sensor(s), or know if the processor is overheating.

Any ideas? Should I just wait for tiger and see what happens? I'm worried that I might blow up the comp and have to send it in again, which would suck royally.

Anyone else with a tibook 867 or similar? What are some normal temperatures for the computer?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Oren Hazi

CzarDerivative · May 24, 2005, 01:35 AM

One more thing...

I've been looking around, and none of the apps that are supposed to be able to monitor temperature seem to be able to do it on my computer. Does the tibook have some issue with temperature sensor access? Could this mean that my temp sensor is fried, and therefore isn't capable of giving a temperature reading? Maybe the computer just puts the fan on full blast if it cant get a temperature reading? If this is the case, can that sensor be replaced/fixed?

thanks,
Oren Hazi

I was David B. · 09:05 AM

Just see if the fans blow out air from the back and the right side. If they do they work well and air can flow freely (if not temp would not drop and the fans would run permanently).

Some threads that I saw stated that 10.3.9 had some issues. I would recomend to downgrade to 10.3.8 and see if the problems remain.

Troll · May 24, 2005, 07:21 AM

I have the same machine with a 60GB hard drive and the fans are on pretty much all the time. It's not a quiet machine. Never has been. When it was launched, heat issues were THE problem with these machines.

I was David B. · May 24, 2005, 08:22 AM

sorry, wrong post

CzarDerivative · Jun 1, 2005, 01:36 AM

I installed tiger. Still no difference. The battery does last much longer than before, which is VERY nice... but this damn fan just won't stop. I put the powerbook on one of my old yearbooks and that helped for a few hours, but now the fan is back going full blast even in idle. Is there ANYTHING that might have gone wrong when it was getting fixed that'd be worth looking at?

TerryJ · Jun 1, 2005, 07:38 AM

Take a look at Activity Monitor, found in your Utilities folder, to see if there are any processes taking up unusual amounts of CPU power. If you see something suspect there, you can kill the process right there in Activity Monitor.

mousehouse · Jun 2, 2005, 02:39 AM

the tibook 867 and 1G have been dubbed "Windtunnel" for a reason. even a dual-G5 seems quiet compared to my laptop. it's always been bad but subsequent OS.X updates and upgrades have made it worse probably because of additional daemons running. With Tiger there is the noticable improvement that the fans quit revving somewhat faster. with any CPU load above a few % average both fans kick in, usually the right side fan (CPU) stays on permanently. attaching my iPod or iSight will keep both fans revving, it just sucks. the audio on the tibook speakers when playing a DVD is barely understandable over the noise of the two fans.

there is nothing you can do, there's just to much heat in a very small space that needs to get out.

edit: Tiger reference