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From: carlo@osprey.cvs.rochester.edu (Carlo Tiana)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Mac temperature, fan, dust.
Message-ID: <9013@ur-cc.UUCP>
Date: 20 Aug 90 23:08:39 GMT
Sender: news@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
Reply-To: carlo@cvs.rochester.edu (Carlo Tiana)
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Organization: Univ. Roch. Center for Visual Sci.
Lines: 35


I wonder if there is anything one can do to improve the cooling and reduce
the dust intake in a Mac (a IIci specifically). I have had my IIci for
about 9 months now. About 3 months ago, I opened the box for some reason and
found it clogged with dust: over the electronics, over the HD (a 210 Mb
Maxtor - which gets hot, normal heat, but probably needs a fan blowing air
over it) and just about everywhere else too. I looked around a bit and
noticed that the fan draws in cold air from just about any hole in the case
and sends out hot air through the fan vents at the back. Cince the largest
hole in the case is the floppy drive hole at the front, I wondered what the
floppy heads felt about this, since they probably have accumulated as much
dust as everything else (maybe this has some relevance to the floppy
read/write failures people complain about every once in a while??).
So I decided to turn the fan around, so as to have control
over where the air came in from, and took a furnace filter (local hardware
store, $0.95 or so), cut it to size to cover the (now localized) fan intake
and (with some sweat, tape and incatations) mounted it on the back of my
Mac. Sure enough, the filter is now all clogged up, but no big deal, I can
cut another piece and replace it. But: should I do this? My Mac sits in a
somewhat enclosed space (say 3'x3'x3') so the air does not circulate in an
optimal fashion ;) and gets rather hot (there is a nice stream of hot air
coming OUT of the floppy slot now!). In addition, the air from the fan now
blows over the hot power supply, and, thus heated, over the HD.... Is what I
am doing a big no-no? Are there any other solutions to avoid the interior
of the machine filling up with dust? I may want to have enough space left in
there for a NuBus board one day! I am sure the dust does not do anything
any good. Also, I am sure my Mac was a lot noisier after 6 mo than it was
when new, and I can only attribute this to dust (maybe lodging itself in
the fan assembly?) Anyone else tried to fix this? Anyone else worried about
this?
Carlo.



carlo@cvs.rochester.edu