Fan not working; Acer Aspire 5710

gbloon · 03-19-2009, 05:06 AM

Update: I now have the external cooler (fan tray), and have tried it out. In an ambient temperature of about 25°C, and while compiling a kernel, CPU core temperature was steady at about 55°C. So, under heavy load, the machine runs about 30° over ambient. I think the highest temperature in which I will need to work will be about 30°, so the machine should not get much hotter than 60°. I think this will be OK. I am guessing it be around 50° most of the time, going up to 60 occasionally. It should survive this, I believe. Would anyone like to comment?

(The kernel I compiled was the latest stable version. I booted the system with it, but fan cooling was still broken, unfortunately)

johnkeates · 04-11-2009, 07:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gbloon

Yes, I have. Without ACPI too many things are broken; even wireless doesn't work. I have tried every one of the possible OS_names - but it does not make any difference to the fan, and anyway these options are not honored, and the memory location where this selection is stored still contains the value for Windows Vista, whatever OS name is in kernel options. I guess Acer is really serious about this being a "Vista only" machine!

If you can't solve it software wise, I think it's time for you to consider just hardware modding the fan, just connect it to some internal power line to have it running. Maybe add a potentiometer to make it go slower, or a small temperature controlled fan speed manager.

Sometimes it's just plain broken, and software won't fix it in time for usage. Powering the fan yourself might actually be your solution this time