8/9/98: from a reader, Mr. Yamada

During the last ten days, I had felt the track pad heating up to an extraordinary degree. Before, the track pad would only reach 67 C, but now it was up to 75 C. Along with the track pad heating up, I decided to turn off the computer 10 minutes after boot-up because of the repeated appearance and disappearance of a horizontal line, two pixels high, that crossed the width of the screen. At that point, the temperature was 50 C. After that, the machine didnユt start up at all,not even a startup sound.

Following the instructions of the shop where I had bought the machine, I took it to an NCR quick-garage in Yokohama. When they took the powerbook apart, they found a loose screw on the logic board. The repair was completed by exchanging the logic board and raising up the bottom heat-sink.

The NCR staff told me that it was difficult to identify the exact cause of the malfunction, whether it was a short circuit caused by the screw, or whether it was the unusual heat condition. There was no payment necessary for the repair, because there were 3 weeks left on the warranty. After that, I was able to use the machine for 2 hours continuously, and the temperature was only 60 C.