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WallStreet and Heat

From dxtr:

Hi Charles,

I just read your article on the revival of your WallStreet. Congratulations on the return of an old friend!

I am a little confused with the discussion of the heat sink that is currently in the WallStreet. If I understand the article correctly you do not have an upgraded processor but an original Apple Daughter Card. If this is the case the white pad on the bottom of the heat sink is a thermal pad. It MUST contact the CPU in order to function. This is very important. It sounds like the temperature rise you experienced when you installed the extra RAM was due to improper contact between the thermal pad and the CPU. This would certainly cause the failure you experienced. It was a good thing that you did not put any thermal paste in during the initial RAM upgrade as Thermal Pads and Thermal Paste are not compatible. Thermal Pads are the absolute low end of the heat transfer spectrum. They are used by manufactures to reduce cost and labor. They are barely adequate to do the job and once the adhesive contact is broken are even more suspect.

Thermal Paste is designed to fill the microscopic groves in a metal, usually copper, puck. As is the case with most PowerBook upgrades. A very small amount or paste is spread on each side of the puck. Over a few days the pressure of the heat sink against the top of the puck and hence the CPU forces the paste into the mating surfaces and improves heat transfer. As you know I upgraded my old Lombard, still going strong on Panther as we speak, with a PowerLogix BlueChip LS. You don't know what heat is until you put a 500 MHz G4 in a PowerBook designed for a 333 MHz G3! I did more research and sent more email than any other computer related thing I have ever done. In the process I learned a lot about thermal transfer and ended up with a very stable, very fast, laptop.

As I am writing this on my LittleAL, Temperature Monitor is reporting 108.3 F. Not bad considering I have a very quiet home made Rube Goldberg fan system under it that sits on a CoolPad!

seeya

dxtr

Hi dxtr;

Your letter is exatly the kind of response I hoped the article would elicit.

The WallStreet has a stock 233 MHz processor, and it does have a white, disk-shaped thremal pad on the underside of the heat sink where the latter contacts the CPU chip. It seems to have some vestiges if a paste-like substance on it -- must be the adhesive contact you mentioned., but very little. I expect that the heat sink has now been removed and replaced maybe two-dozen times during the life of the computer -- all but three or four of them since the original processor died.I haven't added any substance to the thermal pad or the contact on the top Pascal St. Clair the CPU.

Over the past few days, I've found that it runs at about 105° - 120° hwen being used for word processing, which isn't too alarming, but as I noted in the article, it got up to about 146° during a long download last week.

So if thermal paste is a bad idea, what about the adhesive stuff?

Incidentally, I am immensely enjoying getting reacquainted with this great computer.

Thanks for the information.

Charles

Re: WallStreet and Heat

From dxtr

Hi Charles,

The problem with the adhesive on a Thermal Pad is it is basically a one time use item.The factory applies it and out the door it goes. They don't have to worry about it and "most" people never open their laptop. As I said from what I could find from the net and various vendors the Thermal Pad is the least expensive way to conduct heat away from the CPU. Certainly better than nothing, but not much. Once the "seal" is broken it's all down hill from there. When you reassemble the heat sink plate tighten the screw on the left (middle) side first. This allows maximum contact pressure between the CPU and Thermal Pad. I never found an adhesive substitute and I looked pretty hard. If you keep the stock setup I would highly recommend a cooler fan under the WallStreet.If you go with the Upgrade I believe the cooler fan is absolutely necessary! I sent a review to you a while back of the ones I have tried and it is still current.

Hope this helps.

Seeya

dxtr

"Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?" - Tom Clancy

Heat sink issues

From Robert Eye

Charles,

Glad to hear your WallStreet is up and running!

Whatever you do, make sure you use the thermal compounds, NOT the thermal epoxies. Epoxy is meant for permanent mounting, and I don't think that's necessary or desirable.

Regards,

Robert Eye

Hi Robert;

Thanks for the advice. I hadn't considered using thermal epoxy, and indeed, I haven't used anything so far, which dxtr (above) says is the right plan.

Charles

Growing up from Yahoo Mail

From Randy Walker

Charles,



It seems that all of the letters you publish start off with some effusive praise for your columns. Well, I decided I was not going to do that. So, although I read your columns daily and really enjoy them, even when I do not agree, you will not hear that from me.



So, here's my question. To date, we have used Yahoo Mail for the family Email. However, it is just too spam-friendly for my tastes. So, since mail capability comes with our broadband connection, I thought I'd try it. Well, last night, I found that it requires Outlook Express. Not having any experience with this, it may be satisfactory, but just in case, what technical issues would force the usage of a particular mail solution? Isn't a POP-mail solution interchangeable with another, or even SMTP with another? The only difference with those is whether or not it stores the mail on the server or the local machine, right?



Thanks, Randy

Hi Randy;

Praise is optional.

If it's a POP email service, it should work with any client that supports the POP 3 protocol, such as OS X Mail or Eudora or a whole raft of others.

It may be that your ISP is just trying to avoid configuration support calls from users with non-MS emial clients.

If you're running OS X, the easy test is to just enter the server and login info and see if it works. Alternatively, download Eudora or Mozilla ThunderBird or ???? and try with them.

Let me know how you make out.

Charles

Thanksgiving

From Steve Ontong

Hi,

I came across your site recently and found it to be really amazing . I particularly liked your "Happy Canadian Thanksgiving" and noticed you link to Thanksgiving resources and thought our web site might be of interest to you and your visitors. I have an e-card site related to greetings on Thanksgiving. I wonder if you would be interested in linking to us. Please let me know your views. Happy Thanksgiving!



Steve

http://www.thanksgiving-cards.net/

Hi Steve;

Glad you like Applelinks.

Excellent ecards site. I especially appreciate your including a Canadian Thanksgiving section.

Charles

CM

Charles W. Moore

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