I cant stand that fan anymore. Going to have replace it and give the PSU a good clean at the same time. First to remove it and open it up. See if there are any dead things in there or bits of crap.
On an interesting side-note. I discovered something unexpected in this case:
Interesting… Since this drive is an IDE device not compatible with the Commoore PC10s onboard controller, which is the older XT version. In point of fact it only supports a limited set of drives, most of which are broken by now and some of which were very unreliable. Just the usual set of Windows 3.1 install files on here, nothing too interesting. I have securely erased it anyway on another machine as I wont be using it in here anyway. So… where were we? Ah yes, the PSU:
Pulling the PSU out there is some dirt in there but not too bad. Got to cut my losses and ditch this fan as this is totally non viable. Here is the offending article:
Right, time to cut this loose! Sorry, there is no way to do this nicely:
Right now with done I can use the connector cable on the fan and solder it to a new fan lead. Going to knock out the captive nuts from this fan and use it with the screws to mount the new fan:
Soldered the fan cable with a nice heat shrink. Mounted it in the PSU really easily.
Next cleaned up the PSU with a gentle brushing:
Now to replace this and give it a try. Well there is no grinding nose. The replacement is in fact a CPU fan that I never used so it is not as quiet as I would have liked but the airflow is brilliant and there is no grinding noise anymore. Besides it is a classic and it would not do to have a machine that is TOO quiet!
Next got to tackle the front cover. It is not too bad but could do with some sprucing up:
I have been using Vanish Oxi Action to do my retro brighting. It is quite gentle and other techniques do have a brighter result but I find this to be easy to use and safe. I covered the main Commodore label and gave it a soak for about 3 hours in warm water, outside in full sun.
I think the result is not bad:
Next got to tackle something more technical.
The motherboard shows a missing CMOS battery.