From: ice@skynet.uucp (Ice)
Subject: Re: noisy fan...
Organization: Industrial Cybernetics
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 1993 07:45:30 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.181825.2110@spectrum.xerox.com> sprague.wbst311@xerox.com writes:
[...]
>sounds his fan made.  After it was mounted differently, he said
>all the noise went away.
>
>I have never really had the urge to open the power supply in my PC
>though.  :-)  Of course, it you decide to do somehting like this,
>make _sure_ you unplug the PC.
>
>			~ Mike (sprague.wbst311@xerox.com)


This is a very late reply, (damn f*cking kernel panix!) but better late
than never.

Noisy fans are a pain in the ass and they don't do their job of dissipating
heat as efficiently which is bad news for your computer.

Don't be afraid to open the power supply. It is a big joke what those stickers
say. Once you get started, you'll wonder why you waited so long to fix this
really simple problem.

I ripped eight of them apart en route to getting a fan for my computer, so
I can save everyone a lot of hassle.

First, find an electronics shop or a store that sells a lot of computers
and undoubtedly has a large number of burned out power supplies, where
the fan is perfectly fine. 

Now open up your power supply (after powering down of course) and see what
kind of fan you have. Usually they are one of two sizes, one for the
desktop case kind of power supplies and one for towers. Disconnect it and
take it to the shop and get a fan that is of the same size.

Here is the fucked up part. Sometimes, the wire connector needs to be
reversed from how it is supposed to go in because one manufacturer
will have the polarities one way, and another will reverse them.

I thought that there was something wrong with the fan - ie. it was
burned out too - when I put the connector in the way it was supposed to
go; it never occurred to me to try the reverse polarity. I tried five
different fans until I found one which worked according to the connector
orientation, but it was for a smaller fan.

The other thing was that the power supply WILL NOT supply power to the
fan unless it detects a load on it - this is to prevent short circuits
but you CANNOT find the proper wire orientation unless you put a load
on the power supply to draw power from it. You can do this by connecting
a power lead to one of your floppy drives. If you do not do this, ALL
the fans will appear to be dead regardless of whether the orientation is
correct, and you won't be able to tell if you got it correct until everything
is re-connected, and if you are wrong, you will have to do it all again.

So, keeping the power supply open and beside the computer, connect a
power lead to one of the floppies, and connect your fan to the jumper
on the power supply. Turn it on and see if the fan starts spinning.
If so, then you can close everything up and re-install the power supply.

If nothing spins, turn the supply off and reverse the connector for the
fan and re-insert onto the jumper. This time, it should spin.

If not, then (unlikely though this is), your fan is bad; get another
and try again. This is also a good time to take some compressed air
and blow the dust out of the supply and help to dissipate heat still
further.

Hopefully, this will help many people out who get annoyed with noisy
muffin fans, and are not going to put up with paying ridiculous fees
for service.

Disclaimer: I am NOT responsible or liable for any injury to persons
or equipment as a result of this advice. This information is provided
as a service to technically competent individuals and is believed to
be reliable. However it is not possible to anticipate every possible
context and user, so this disclaimer is necessary. 

Hope this helps.

Ice()		ice@skynet.uucp
{
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Audio() Burning Inside by Ministry; "The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste" 
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware