Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / February 2006

What do you mean "never working to full potential"?

What pailface88 said. I could get the fan to come on maybe 1/2 the time
while playing a DVD at 80F ambient. I suppose Garageband would probably
be able to get it hot enough as well.

But the goal isn't to get the fan to come on, the goal is to get your
work done. If the computer does what you want and doesn't hang or crash,
who cares if the fan is running?

#1 ? Why do you want to do this? I had a Pismo as my main work machine for
years and I never heard the fan come on once. m.

#2 ?What do you mean "never working to full potential"?

#3 ?But the goal isn't to get the fan to come on, the goal is to get your
work done. If the computer does what you want and doesn't hang or crash,
who cares if the fan is running?

#4 ?It only comes on on my ibook if
it gets up to about 155F and that only happens for me if I am encoding
a video file. Nothing else I do even approaches that high of a
temperature.?

Thank you everyone for the thoughtful replies.  You've raised some valid
points that deserve answers.  Here we go

#1 You are very lucky to have your Pismo work so hard for you.  In my
graduate class this machine was a required (intelligence beyond normal for
administrators)  In a class of nearly 20 grad students fully over half
returned them for various repairs that ran the route.  Though mine was the
only one to be so crippled.  I want the fan to run to cool the machine to
see if that (the high temp) is what is causing it to be unusable.  I find
that if I dislodge the keyboard to allow more air to reach the innards it
takes longer to go into kernel panic.  At this point in time it can sit
idling for about half an hour before k-panic.  If I try to do more than
write a simple HTML file it won't last for fifteen minutes.  iTunes takes
it down in less than ten minutes

#2 Full potential is doing what the machine was designed to do and using
all of it's designed abilities.  Rendering video was a no-go in either
Premier 6 or FCP 1 or 2  Director was always dodgy and Word would tank the
Pismo inside of 20 minutes.  Try to write a thesis in 20 minute sessions.

#3 I realize that the computer should compute and does not exist for the
fan to run.  I put OS X on it and instead of locking up (freezing) it
would go into kernel panic.  I used a utility (and can't for the life of
me remember where I got it)  that would read out the temp in a meaningful
way and
*every* time it read 145deg the utility would lock up and the machine
became un responsive until about 5-10 minutes later it would go into
kernel panic.  Restart was impossible until it returned to near ambient
temp.

#4 My first indication of trouble was when after an entire night 11pm -
7am it failed to render a 3 minute video file (using FCP 2).  In the end
of it's usefulness to me,I could use simple text for some light HTML and
Flash so long as the files weren't too complex.

So, I'm guessing nobody knows how to hack the fan circuit to run.  Thank
you for your efforts and time.  I realize this isn't easy.  Apple has
replaced the RAM the HD, the mother board (2x) the daughter card (2x) and
I'm thinking I'm forgetting something.  I've been looking at using it as a
wall mounted display system.  Just strip the case *off* and install it in
a shadow box and run Q/T slide shows on it.  
If something I've mentioned has triggered an idea please don't be shy.  I
appreciate any and all ideas and suggestions (beyond the sarcastic ones
thank you;-)

Thanks again,
Mark