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tom vilsack

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 20, 2010
1,880
63
ladner cdn
Always wanted a Ti so bought this the other day off craigs Vanc.

Ad said Powerbook Ti 500,512 ram....payed $40...turned it on and it's a Ti 867 with max 1 gig ram. :)

Installed leopard on it,and she runs great except for fans...after about 5 min there always on...i have done pretty much everything i can think of...

-clean install of leopard
-resetting the PMU
-reset the P-RAM
-cleaned out all the vents,fans ect of dust
-tryed replacing AppleADM103x.kext with one from 10.2.8 (allows fans not to kick in at lower temp...148 Fahrenheit instead of 125 Fahrenheit)

non of this helped...fans still stay on,and pretty much full...the Ti is not all that hot underneath (i can't say for sure as these Ti don't include software temp sensors or would check with something like istat nano)

would taking out logic board and reinstalling thermal paste make fans run normal? (i can handle task,but would rather not have to take apart if it's not gonna help,maybe these old Ti 867s just run this way?)

edit: done see pics/story

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justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,553
9,745
I'm a rolling stone.
What does the model say physically, not in software, lets say it is the 500 on the tag, then you know it has a different Logic board inside, if this is the case then reapplying the thermal paste might help since the swap wasn't done properly.
 

tom vilsack

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 20, 2010
1,880
63
ladner cdn
Running just off battery and reducing cpu performance seems to help...when hooking back to ac it start back up (have googled lots of others with similar issue ,back in the day)...so perhaps it's more normal then not?

Sure is a nice looking styled laptop (way ahead of it's time)..and mainly bought for my collection,so all good...
 

SecretSquirrel

macrumors regular
Jan 21, 2013
127
195
U.K.
Had one of these a while back. The 800/867/1G models all had an extra fan on the dc-in board to keep it cool. It starts up every time you put it on charge. Maybe the fan bearings are on the way out, making it louder than it should be? BTW, I rebuilt several Tibooks and changing the thermal paste on these was a logic board out job. Not impossible, but not to be done in a hurry either. :)
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,698
26,713
I would check to see what's causing load. Usually the fans only kick on because the CPU has spiked long enough to bring the heat level up.

You might try letting it sit or do what you normally do while using the Console app to watch the system log. If you get a bunch of consistent writes to the log you can get an idea of what's going on.

I left an old VNC server running on my old TiBook. When I got my first AlBook I cloned the TiBook drive and that kept the VNC server which I had forgotten about running. Wasn't until last year when I finally used Console to track down what was consistently hitting me with load that I found this old code. Killing it gave me performance back. The dang thing had been trying to start, failing and then retrying. All the failures were logged to Console.

Hope that helps.
 

tom vilsack

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 20, 2010
1,880
63
ladner cdn
SecretSquirrel: yes i have looked into ifixit to redo the thermal paste...doesn't look to bad (have taken a few ibooks apart,so know what im in for)

eyoungren: thanks for suggestion...but she has a clean install of leopard...did double check system activity and all seems in order.

On a side note,Im really rather impressed at how well this puppy runs...heck i can even utube at 240p.
 
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seveej

macrumors 6502a
Dec 14, 2009
827
51
Helsinki, Finland
OP, considering that the machine is 10+ years old, and may never have been opened, I'd really have a look inside, blow away all dust and reapply the thermal paste.

Sadly the Tibooks have no software-readable thermal sensors, so you will be able to calibrate the results only by ear...

P.S. The differences in how much dust can be gathered inside a notebook are tremendous. The main differentiator is (naturally) the ambient dust level. I remember a friend's (white) unibody macbook, which I had to clean after it had clogged up in 18 months (she was using it mainly on the bed/floor and it was sucking in fibres, which greatly increases dust retention).

RGDS,
 

chrfr

macrumors G5
Jul 11, 2009
13,492
6,981
Installed leopard on it,and she runs great except for fans...after about 5 min there always on...i have done pretty much everything i can think of...
Keep in mind these ran hot when they were new, and it didn't take much for the fans to come on back then.
 

tom vilsack

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 20, 2010
1,880
63
ladner cdn
What better way to spend a thursday evening :)

took about 2 hours using ifixit guide...really not as bad as i feared,had the right tools so made it fairly straight forward....the thermal paste job from apple was horrible! (see pics)...

using her now,fans don't kick in as much and not as loud...so effort worthwhile.

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eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,698
26,713
-tryed replacing AppleADM103x.kext with one from 10.2.8 (allows fans not to kick in at lower temp...148 Fahrenheit instead of 125 Fahrenheit)
I didn't realize anything about this. But I tried it for both my 17" Macs and I must say it's benefitted me greatly, especially my 1Ghz Mac.

The fans still come on at 140º (this didn't change the temp they come on for me), but it now takes longer to get there. Replacing this kext file seems to have reduced CPU usage for some reason. My 1Ghz Mac is drawing only about 11-12% CPU idling on Facebook. That's never happened before! In any case, I know it was not meant as a tip, but thanks for mentioning it!
 

tom vilsack

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 20, 2010
1,880
63
ladner cdn
I didn't realize anything about this. But I tried it for both my 17" Macs and I must say it's benefitted me greatly, especially my 1Ghz Mac.

The fans still come on at 140º (this didn't change the temp they come on for me), but it now takes longer to get there. Replacing this kext file seems to have reduced CPU usage for some reason. My 1Ghz Mac is drawing only about 11-12% CPU idling on Facebook. That's never happened before! In any case, I know it was not meant as a tip, but thanks for mentioning it!

So your fan comes on at 140 not 148f? the hack should prevent fan from coming on at 125f but rather 148f...as for lowering CPU usage,interesting find...
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,698
26,713
So your fan comes on at 140 not 148f? the hack should prevent fan from coming on at 125f but rather 148f...as for lowering CPU usage,interesting find...
On both of my Macs the fans come on at 140º, yes. Both are 17" PowerBooks. There may be some temp variation though. I say that because iStat Menus tells me that it's 140º and that's when the fans come on. But it's possible that iStat Menu says 140, but the actual temp could be 148º.

This is purely speculation on my part, but my Leopard install disk is a retail universal version. I'm guessing that the kext file from Jaguar does a better job because Jaguar was PowerPC only. Perhaps the Leopard kext file performs better on an Intel Mac and less well on a PowerPC Mac. Just guessing as I don't know a lot about that stuff.

But I do see a dramatic result in CPU usage, which I was not expecting at all.
 
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