BTW, Apple's Genius Bar prices for service on old laptops are actually shockingly reasonable. They replaced the mobo and dvd drive on my old 12" Powerbook for (IIRC) $300 in 2008.
That page - from 2003 - links to http://www.memtest86.com/ which seems to have ceased development in '07. http://www.memtest.org/ is Memtest+ which is still being worked on. I'm going to assume they're getting better and better at what they do. :)
Now, I can't really speak to the current validity of the concept, but I really don't want to reset this system to build kernels on.
Grr, got logged out. That anon comment was me. To repeat: Memtest sucks, use Prime95. http://mattgadient.com/2008/03/29/prime95-for-mac-os-x/ You can stress the CPU or the memory selectively, it'll let you figure out what's overheating.
That said, it's an old laptop so the thermal paste is probably toast. I'd be willing to bet money that tearing it down and re-pasting the CPU would fix it. That stuff has a limited useful life.
What's fundamentally wrong with Memtest (or really, Memtest+, the still-under-development branch)?
And yeah, I've heard that about thermal paste, which is why I started with figuring out what the teardown looks like and THEN continued on to trying to avoid it. :/
I was a bit general in my statement, let me overhaul. ;)
Memtest, while great for error checking RAM, sucks for diagnosing overheating issues, as you can't separately test the various bits and pieces. Prime95 (or similar software) will let you zero in on which component exactly is overheating, from RAM to CPU to northbridge, etc.
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Now, I can't really speak to the current validity of the concept, but I really don't want to reset this system to build kernels on.
Thanks, though. :)
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To repeat:
Memtest sucks, use Prime95.
http://mattgadient.com/2008/03/29/prime95-for-mac-os-x/
You can stress the CPU or the memory selectively, it'll let you figure out what's overheating.
That said, it's an old laptop so the thermal paste is probably toast. I'd be willing to bet money that tearing it down and re-pasting the CPU would fix it. That stuff has a limited useful life.
Reply
And yeah, I've heard that about thermal paste, which is why I started with figuring out what the teardown looks like and THEN continued on to trying to avoid it. :/
Reply
Memtest, while great for error checking RAM, sucks for diagnosing overheating issues, as you can't separately test the various bits and pieces. Prime95 (or similar software) will let you zero in on which component exactly is overheating, from RAM to CPU to northbridge, etc.
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