600e fan suddenly noisy

[Olde Man]

Blades appear to be ticking something.

I have a 600 laying around doing nothing. Are the fans easily interchangeable? (Note my signature..easy is the word)

Conversely, the 600e is used for MS-Dos data bases and I rarely use it more than 20 minutes at a time. Maybe it doesn't need an operating fan?

[Norway Pad]

I can only answer in a theoretical sense, as I have never carried out this swap. But I have been looking into the same thing, as the fan in my 600 is making a slight noise. So I looked into which 600 models have compatible fan/heatsink units. And according to the 600/600E HMM, these two models use the same fan/heatsink unit, FRU 05K4830. The change comes with the 600X, which uses fan 08K5909, and fan 08K6290 for the 600X 2465-5Fx and -9Fx models, which I believe are the native 650MHz PIII speesdstep enabled units.

I don't know what the differences between these types of fans and heatsinks are, and if the 600X ones could be installed in the 600 / 600E models as an upgrade. But since you already have a spare 600, you have parts there that's compatible. If the 600 is still working, maybe buying a fan/heatsink on eBay instead of parting out the 600 could be an idea, but that's up to you. A plain 600 isn't worth much these days anyway.

If the fan is detected by the system to be absent (Disconnected) or non-functioning, the laptop will throw Error 192 during POST.

For the "easy" reference, I don't see your signature, though..

[Olde Man]

Well Shucks, I decided to do to the computer what I did to recalcitrant kids, turned it over, gave the bottom a sharp whack, the noise went away and I can hear the fan start.

Amazing what can be done with old-fashioned tech.

[RealBlackStuff]

LOL!

[Norway Pad]

From your original description (Blades appear to be ticking something), maybe there was something stuck in your fan. If so, it seems like your method fixed it. Awesome.