Hi! I own a Pismo, 400mhz, 60gig, 384mb, and like many G3 powerbook owners, I've many times wondered if the fan even worked until the day it finally turned on (last year), and I freaked out thinking that the hard drive was blowing up! I've heard similar stories from other Pismo owners freaking out the day they heard their fan kick in.
Using Jeremy Kezer's shareware program Thermograph X, I decided to find out exactly at what temperature the Pismo's fan would turn on. I smothered my Pismo with a blanket around the sides and did 3D rendering with Bryce while playing iTunes. After about an hour or so, temperature stabilized at 147F and remained there. So then I played a DVD, and fifteen minutes later Thermograph X registered a peak 154F reading. The very second it reached 154F, I heard the fan turn on. I removed the blanket and let the fan do its thing. The fan ran for two or three minutes and when the temperature reached 125F, the fan shut off. No slowdowns or freezes happened the entire time the computer was running hot.
It's interesting, with heavy processor load and zero airflow it took over an hour for the fan to kick in, and it took only 2 or 3 minutes to drop the temperature 30 degrees! This leads me to think that the fan and heat-sink setup of the Pismo is extremely efficient in dissipating heat.
Attached is a screenshot of the temperature graph. You can see the temperature stabilized at 147F. When it reached its peak and the fan kicked in, the temperature dropped so fast that the 154 peak didn't even register on the graph but is represented as the graph's ceiling. You can see the quick decline to 125F and that's when the fan shut off.
Thanks to Jeremy Kezer. Pismo owners, don't worry about your fan. It's standing by, ready to turn on if ever needed!
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