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Re: sticky bit, powersaving & hdd spindown



There are those who would have you believe that Krzys Majewski wrote:
> Damien <bitwise@repose.cx> writes:
> 
> > i've been working on a stand alone music player for the last couple of months.
> > it's currently a bit loud (being based around an old p166 with a very noisy
> > hdd & powersupply fan.
> 
> I can't help  wondering if you could do away  with the hdd altogether,
> e.g. booting  the thing once  and for all  from floppies. The  P/S fan
> solution I've  posted before -- if  it's an old and  wimpy machine and
> you're daring you could maybe try even more extreme things like nuking
> the fan  altogether. (Check your household fire  insurance?) Along the
> same lines,  you could try disabling the  CPU fan as well  if you have
> one. I ran my PIII-500E for a few hours with the CPU fan unplugged and
> it didn't even blink.  It seems to me that there is  a bit of room for
> trial and  error here,  especially if  you can afford  it: if  the CPU
> overheats,  the  machine will  crash.  Whether  this  damages the  CPU
> permanently  I  don't  know,  any  electronics types  here  that  know
> anything about this?  
> 


This is a good idea about just tossing the hard drive.  You could also
write a bootable CDR and just use that.

I would be very careful about running a CPU without a fan.  IIRC, you
said you were using a Pentium 166. With a good heatsink and enough
airflow past the heatsink you could do without a fan.  Newer CPUs
cannot run without a fan; AMD specifically recommends that you never
power on an Athlon without a heatsink and fan, not even for a couple
of seconds just to make sure it works.



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