Blog

This personal blog comprises whatever I feel like saying on any given day, which often involves topics like new media, journalism, Web technologies, Racket/Scheme/Lisp, Free and open source software, societal issues, cinema film, Boston, and humor. Many things noted here are solely for the benefit of future Web searchers trying to solve particular esoteric problems, and are not of general interest. This blog is largely insulated from my professional life, and vice-versa. I attempt to provide full disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. My site currently gets over 1000 unique visitors a day.

So, I Bought a Ferrari

After already paying a premium to live in walkable Cambridge (Massachusetts, USA), I blew the remainder of my fortune on an extravagantly impractical appendage extension.

It's not gonna get me through Boston traffic any faster.

Replacing Heat Sink and Fan Assembly on IBM ThinkPad T60

Today, the fan in my IBM ThinkPad T60 abruptly began to sound like a grinder and airflow stopped. Fortunately, I'd recently bought a replacement heat sink and fan assembly. If your T60 is getting on in years and the fan is failing, but you're trying to avoid moving to a newer, widescreen model, here are some tips on how to replace the part.

• Determine the correct part (field-replaceable unit, FRU). There are a few different FRUs used in versions of the T60, depending on the LCD size and whether you have "integrated" or "discrete" graphics. Note that your XXXX-XXX number is not necessarily enough to determine which FRU you need, especially if you have an XXXX-CTO. lspci in Linux showed that I have one of the ATI graphics chipsets available for the T60, which is "discrete".

• Buy the part. I found a good genuine part on eBay from a reputable seller in the US heartland, and verified with him that it was indeed a genuine part that he obtained direct from Lenovo. Be aware that eBay is littered with counterfeit electronics, of substandard construction or even intentionally nonfunctional fakes, most often shipped direct from Asia. In the case of this laptop cooling part, your laptop will bake itself if the part is not within spec in several important respects.

• Make sure that you have appropriate heatsink grease. The part I purchased already had official grease on it, but reportedly not all parts do.

• Find the current version of the Hardware Maintenance Manual (HMM) for your T60 version at http://www.lenovo.com/support. If you do not have an extra computer handy for viewing the manual while operating on your T60, you will want to print it out the pertinent pages. (I didn't print one section that I thought I wouldn't need, and a colleague in the UK graciously helped me find the right screws for one of the steps and confirm that the antenna leads could safely be removed. You do not want to have to rely on transatlantic assistance.)

• Be aware of static electricity, and why it is bad.

• I had to use a few different sizes of screwdriver, partly because I didn't have perfect matches, plus a needlenose. If you have a jeweler's set of slotted, plus a phillips, you should be OK.

• IBM used to specify that you should use a new screw set to bolt the laptop back up, and even specified the exact torque to use for the screws. Since this is not a helicopter we're servicing, I live a little dangerously in this regard.

• Contrary to what the HMM might say, you might not need to remove the wireless card.

• You shouldn't have any trouble keeping track of the screws for the hard drive bay, palmrest, and keyboard, since they're all the same, but it gets complicated right after that. I recommend drawing diagrams of top and bottom views of laptop on pieces of paper, and attaching removed screws to the diagram using loops of tape, so that you can quickly put the screws back in the right holes and not strip any threads with the wrong screw. (I blogged this same advice three years and one day ago, 2007-07-24.)

• The HMM didn't say anything about removing remnants of the old thermal grease from the CPU, but I did. I didn't really like brushing the CPU ungrounded, and tried not to leave any cleaning residue that might compromise the new grease. YMMV.

• Once you get everything back together, be sure to check that the fan comes on and that there's airflow.

• Immediately after replacing, I'm noticing a faint, very high-pitched noise. I don't think that it's from fan or mechanicals, but it might be from power circuitry. Either it was a pre-existing sound that was simply masked by the noisy fan before, or it's a new problem.

Incidentally, the T60 is not without its issues, but I've standardized on the T60 for now. You can easily find versions with high-res 4:3 (1400x1050) LCDs that are good for seeing more lines of code at once than the widescreens, and you can buy a few T60 units refurbished/unused for the same cost as one current model of the same grade. I think that the T42 was better quality than the T60, but it didn't have SATA, it's not dual-core, and the LCD backlights should be failing by now. I'm not sure about the T43 -- I recall they had an IDE-SATA bridge or some other suspiciousness at the time.

Kill A Watt and Dance On Its Grave

I reluctantly bought one of those things that one uses only for an hour and that then sits unused in a drawer for the rest of one's life. Specifically, I invested $17 in a Kill A Watt power meter.

Until recently, my power footprint was relatively small, but I've been running the AC, I built a RAID server, and I got a good deal on a PS3, so it was time to gather intel...

• My window AC indeed draws 500W, which means that I shouldn't feel too bad about running it 24/7 when we get days like the other day ("Feels Like 105F").

• The RAID server that I built to be low-power draws only 24W under load, which means that the worst-case power cost to run it 24/7 is about $3.50 per month. And I intend that the disks be spun down most of the time.

• The PS3 Slim and the 23-inch LCD computer monitor with integrated speakers together draw around 190W under load, which is silly just for playing music from tinny little speakers. And which is another reason that I will eventually sell the PS3 and build a simple low-power media machine instead.

Anyone I know in town is welcome to borrow the Kill A Watt.