Re: Digital Exorcism
Re: Digital Exorcism
- Subject: Re: Digital Exorcism
- From: email@hidden (Anthony Sanna)
- Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 13:04:27 -0600
>
Though most processors/ic's etc will perform better at cooler
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temperatures, I find it interesting your machine (using Metronome)
>
outputs 19c. We have six G4s and various G3s. Almost all their
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Metronome readings output from 23c to 33c with fluctuations
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plus-or-minus 2c.
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>
However, I would note that we have exchanged two of our G4's within
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the first two weeks, and changed out a motherboard in another, for
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problems very similar to your own.
This morning Metronome is recording 27C (how does it record the temp,
anyway?), more in line with what you're getting. My remote temperature
transmitter placed in the Mac's exhaust air stream reads a pretty steady
85 to 87F (around 30C). That doesn't sound too bad. The cooling air on
the G4 comes up from the bottom, is blown across the processor by one
large fan, and is then sucked up the hollow side of the case where it is
drawn through the power supply by a second fan and blown out the back
across my temp unit.
I replaced the motherboard already, and I've got a processor board coming
in next week to try. John Gnaegy's suggestions of processor/heat sink
problems set off a light bulb in my head. My Mac sits on the floor close
to a floor-to-ceiling casement window. Many times my office will become
very overheated due to the amount of equipment & Solux lights running,
along with the propensity of this building's funky heating system to pump
out too much heat in the wintertime. It's not uncommon for me to be
working with the window cracked open when it's -0F (Wisconsin, you know),
or to have it completely open when the outside temperature rockets into
the 20's.
It just may be that throwing the casement open and dropping frigid air to
the floor might be sending quite a shock through the system. Enough so
that, over time, I may have some poor bonding of the processor to the
heat sink.
I started to log every Mac-action of my work day to see if I could tie
these crashes to a sequence of actions, applications, or events. The
crashes I've been having are basically two out-of-the-blue-for-no-reason
types: random application freezes and Type 10 errors (routine not
available); and one action-specific Finder crash. This usually happens
when switching out of an inactive app by clicking on a window or desktop,
switching during a process (i.e.: spooling print), or when connecting to
my Win2K server when mounting a volume or opening an already mounted
disk. There was also a ColorFlex/Photoshop quit/crash, but that, for the
time being, has disappeared.
While logging every launch, action, success, oddity, crash, restart,
diagnostic, and expletive uttered, I came up with this odd combination of
factors..... Examples: Although every background process had been shut
down (via Peek-a-Boo) and Photoshop was just sitting there while, let's
say, I was talking on the phone, I might suddenly get a "Type 10
Error/Restart" pop up on the screen. Or while doing some basic operation
in Illustrator, things freeze. The one common thread was that my ancient
& trusty Claris E-Mailer was running, or had been run since restart. I
Photoshop'd & Illustrated for five hours yesterday afternoon without a
problem (4 1/2 hours longer than usual) after avoiding E-Mailer. The
folks on the E-Mailer list couldn't see the connection, and frankly, my
setup is the same as it's always been, pre-problems. Maybe it's
coincidental.
Thanks for your help. Hopefully I'll be back to simple color questions
soon.
Tony
Anthony R. Sanna
Vice-President
SACO Foods, Inc.
6120 University Avenue
Middleton, Wisconsin 53562 USA
email@hidden
www.sacofoods.com
1-800-373-7226
(608) 238-9101
(608) 238-8149 - fax