atari crashes due to hot weather?

[Marius]

Hi

 

This morning my BBS computer crashed. Well... the ramdisk...

 

Then I picked another Atari from my good working stack, and after a few hours... same happened.

 

In my room it is due to hot weather around 38-40 degrees celcius (around 100-104Fahrenheid)

 

Is there any chance that these higher temperatures are causing trouble with my atari's.

 

They are moderately modded ... so I can imagine the heat from the components has a harder time leaving the machine.

 

Any clues?

 

Greetz

M.

[olavese@online.no]

If that's the temperature in your room, you have my deepest sympathy. Way to hot for you and your computer. During the summer here in Norway, we have at least twice as many computer crashes and it's due to temperature. Atari's are probably better than PC's, but you should buy a cheap air conditioner

[Marius]

If that's the temperature in your room, you have my deepest sympathy. Way to hot for you and your computer. During the summer here in Norway, we have at least twice as many computer crashes and it's due to temperature. Atari's are probably better than PC's, but you should buy a cheap air conditioner

 

Well it's a room right under the roof. It's really unhealthy hot in here. I do not stay there unless it is really necessary. But... now I found my atari crashed TWICE in 24 hours... two different computers. No crashes in 6 months... and now this... so probably the heat...

 

Hummmmmmm

[kenjennings]

Ahhh, this brings back memories of being a teenager growing up in Milwaukee in a house without air conditioning.

 

The Atari 800 worked great all winter, even through the school year. But, once summer vacation started I was hacking on it in the middle of the day and control character graphics started appearing on the screen, and a minute later it froze. Reboot, and it would only last a few minutes. Tried that several times. The computer that cost me a year worth of paper routes was dead. Arggg!! I left it alone the rest of the day and then turned it on later at night and it worked fine, and kept on working all night!

 

The next day it was working great for a while, and then crashed again. Same thing again -- it would run only a few minutes and die. We took it to a computer store and it happily ran memory tests for them non-stop all weekend (hint: the store was air conditioned.) Back at home same thing. It would die after running a while.

 

Eventually, i was able to put 2 and 2 together and figure out it was crashing at about the same time of day every day, because the day was getting hot. Once it cooled off in the evening I could code. Running with the top off and the covers removed from the modules would buy about half an hour in the morning.

 

That summer the Atari 800 taught me two things -- the value of designing and planning on paper before coding on the computer, and that during summer vacation kids are supposed to be outside goofing off instead of inside in front of a computer.

[russg]

Hi

 

This morning my BBS computer crashed. Well... the ramdisk...

 

Then I picked another Atari from my good working stack, and after a few hours... same happened.

 

In my room it is due to hot weather around 38-40 degrees celcius (around 100-104Fahrenheid)

 

Is there any chance that these higher temperatures are causing trouble with my atari's.

 

They are moderately modded ... so I can imagine the heat from the components has a harder time leaving the machine.

 

Any clues?

 

Greetz

M.

 

A simple fan on the computer and drives will cool it. My RANA drives would quit running a BBS, in about 1985. Put a fan blowing accross my table and it did fine. The 100 F isn't a problem for the

computer, but the air around the components inside, if stationary, will become much hotter. Put a fan on it. (that's why fans are built into PC laptops and desktops.)

Edited May 24, 2012 by russg

[LidLikesIntellivision]

Yes, a fan is the answear. I live in Brazil and having Pcs without fans is wasting money. Sometimes I also open my pcs to clean the dust.

I think pcs should always have fans. I don't know Atari computers, but it sounds strange a computer without fans. Well, modern Arms haven't got fans either, but modern computers don't last too much...

[Rybags]

Upgraded machine - totally plausible that any marginal solder joint could be intermittent during hot weather.

 

I had a 130XE going ~ 6 months continuous over summer/autumn a few years back without problem although the room temperature probably never got much over low 30s.

 

Modern computers need fans because you're usually pumping anything between 60-200 Watts of power through the CPU alone and even more through modern high-end graphics cards.

 

Our old gear - the entire machine generally uses 3-6 Watts depending on how much stuff is connected to it.

[russg]

Hi

 

This morning my BBS computer crashed. Well... the ramdisk...

 

Then I picked another Atari from my good working stack, and after a few hours... same happened.

 

In my room it is due to hot weather around 38-40 degrees celcius (around 100-104Fahrenheid)

 

Is there any chance that these higher temperatures are causing trouble with my atari's.

 

They are moderately modded ... so I can imagine the heat from the components has a harder time leaving the machine.

 

Any clues?

 

Greetz

M.

I remember now. My BBS software crashed, the computer crashed, but it was the Rana that was overheating causing the crash. You have a real drive, floppy or hd, probably a floppy?

I had four floppy drives stacked on top of each other. The fan cured it. I put a desk fan blowing on the setup and mounted a 4 1/2 inch (11 cm) fan in a hole I made in the back of the desk.

I was running MPP AMIS on a MPP 300 baud modem. That would be about 1985. Remember baud rate went up about yearly, 300, then 1200, then 2400, then it jumped to 9600 or 14,400

28K and finally about 56K baud for several years before DSL/cable. At 300 baud, it took about 30 minutes to down/up load a 30K file. It would usually get to the last 1K and disconnect,

so you had to start all over. X-modem, Y-modem G, Zmodem.

Edited May 25, 2012 by russg

[Marius]

@russg

 

The only thing connected to this Atari is my Atari 850 and a MyIDE interface.

 

Inside there is the Scott Peterson memory upgrade (320KB in total) and a DS1307 RTC.

 

That's all.

 

The other Atari, that also crashed, has a few more things inside, and even when it is not hot weather, this machine is already a little 'too warm' when I remove the keyboard. Especially the ANTIC is getting really hot in that machine. Probably because I glued a little PCB on top of that Antic. Probably not a good idea... I will not do that anymore in other atari's.

 

I finally decided now to run the BBS on a 64KB atari. The newest firmware of MyIDE is so incredible fast, that a ramdisk is almost not needed anymore.

 

The BBS is just a tiny bit slower now. But I prefer stability over speed.

[+tf_hh]

Hi Marius,

 

I have some machines with hang-ups at hot temperatures also. In all cases the temperature of the CPU was the problem, it was the hottest IC on whole mainboard. On the XE series I never have such problemls - I think there´s enough space over the CPU to let circulate the air within the XE´s case (without shielding, of course). When using XL´s and the keyboard is very close to the CPU, it could be get too hot. Mostly the CPUs manufactured by Signetics have the most problems with hot temperatures.

 

You can buy heat sinks for 40 pin DIL ICs. If you can´t find any at your local electronics store, use any other 2 mm or more thick metal stripe, use some thermal conductance paste in the mid of the CPU and superglue on both ends of CPU. Wait 2 hours to finalize glue process. Not relly cute, but it works :-)

 

Juergen

Edited June 5, 2012 by tf_hh

[Chris Union NJ]

We had a member on amibay that used heat sinks on his 128..

 

http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=5060&highlight=heat

 

 

[RickR]

Could be the power adapter that is overheating. If you haven't already, try a different power brick.