About three months ago, I upgraded a friend from a DX4-100 to a
Cyrix PR233 (256 MB RAM, 8GB HD, scanner, graphics tablet, etc).
After a couple of years of e-mail and web browsing, she's ready to
move some of her graphic arts work to the computer.
Anyway, she called last week to report a problem. The machine
would often hang on her after 30-45 minutes work, and at her most
recent boot she had started to receive messages about hard drive
errors.
Unfortunately, it's about a 3-1/2 hour drive each way....
Assuming from the description that this was probably an overheat
problem, I popped over to Fry's and got a heftier fan/heatsink, three
different slot-mounted cooling solutions, and a temperature
sensor/display unit. I also dug out my spare Bay Cooler, and a copy
of Rain 1.0, a utility for Win 9x that reduces power consumption (and
thus heat dissipation) by the CPU.
[For those not familiar with this and similar utilities: NT,
Linux, and other OSes HALT the CPU when it has nothing to do, so that
it uses almost no power unnecessarily. Win 9x doesn't do that -- the
CPU "spins its wheels" whenever it has to wait. Rain is my favourite
of several utilities which implement the HALT behaviour under Win9x;
this is particularly useful with CPUs that run hotter than average --
which generally includes Cyrix and AMD chips.]
Drove over Friday night after work, and got to the machine midday
on Saturday. Fired it up -- it wants to do Scandisk over the entire
8G drive, which takes a while. So while I'm waiting, I pull the
cover off and check to make sure the problem isn't just a connector
that worked loose on the drive down (three months ago, when she
brought the machine from my place).
There's a drive power lead from the power supply, to a connector
for the CPU heatsink fan, and then that is plugged into the hard
drive. As I reach to check the ribbon cable into the back of the
drive, the power lead slips out of the fan connector -- fan and HD
come to a stop. Scandisk still shows on the screen, apparently
"hung"....
It seems that the little "barb" on this particular power connector
was broken/missing/defective -- when I tried plugging it directly
into the drive, it slipped right out of there too. So I out a strip
of electrician's tape over that connector, and used another lead
(there was one not in use) to connect the fan and drive. [I *did*
replace the heatsink/fan unit with the heftier one I'd brought, but
that was all.]
David G
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