not sure about reading processor temp, but they are fairly tolerant, and a failure would likely produce a crash or corruption in memory/odd program behavior. drives can also overheat, specifically the chips on them (though the platters etc. also generate heat that has to be dissipated), if you look up the manuals for most drives, they'll have max. temps for some of the chips. the only way to measure is with a temperature probe for that or "case" temp (and you have to figure out where to measure, and it's air temperature that you care about in that situation, how hot the box gets is only indirectly relevant).
the more expensive volt meters will take a thermocouple to measure temperature, but an easy check for the drives is to run for a while and then feel the chips with a finger, they may be warm, or slightly hot but generally, anything too hot to touch is a problem. i've also done this on running drives, in which case keeping your' finger on for a while will make them hotter as it blocks air flow, and apparently fingertips doesn't conduct heat very well (which surprised me, but i've observed it a number of times over varying periods of time on different chips). of course in either case you have to be well grounded. some chips can run remarkably hot, but generally it's not good. some chips are perfectly happy at 150 deg. F, which of course is too hot for normal fingertips. also remember, "random" corruption problems happen, all drives have a spec for "soft" errors, i.e. errors that happen, but don't repeat as the disk and hardware aren't faulty (there are many causes, power glitches, e.m. spikes, gamma rays, and even alpha particles from the chips own packages, nearly all materials are slightly radioactive, if you worry about a few particles a day or year...). many of the same things affect ram chips, processors, and everything else on the logic board etc. drive's do also fail, even well cared for drives, some faster than others even when of the same brand and model, and some brands/models are of course worse than others. if you are worried about a drive, it's best to exercise it with a drive testing program, preferably one that will keep it continuously busy doing random read/writes, and if you have time overnight one that checks the whole surface (though modern drives will automatically swap out bad sectors with spares when they are detected, all drives have spare sectors, and nearly all if not all have at least one bad sector even when new, perfect platters are hard to make though they are amazingly better than they used to be). a good processor exercise can help you check that as well, something like seti at home that works it hard but doesn't use the drives much, and of course ram can be tested for a prolonged period as well. mostly, backup, always, things will fail. also keep it relatively dust free, as that drastically increases component temperatures. it's entirely possible the os or something else in ram just got corrupted or that the machine half crashed in some other way, often just rebooting fixes odd behavior when programs go south for no apparent or reproducible reason. Glenn Schunemann wrote: > > All, > > Running a B&W G3 with a G3 900 Powerlogix Zif, two 120 Maxtor drives, > one 40 GB Hitachi Deskstar. I notice that the exterior of my box is > pretty warm (noticeably warm to the touch and not nearly as warm as my > wife's G4 1.25). I had one of my Maxtor drives give me a hassle the ------- > > First, is there a s/w tool for reading processor temp? Second, an easy > way to measure case temp from inside? What is the "norm" or the temp > ranges that the innards can live with? ---------- -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
