This discussion is Beehive CEO's - monthly column as found on the last page of Americas Network magazine. They have been printing his letters for nearly 20 years. This column will remain posted till he writes the next one. The Last Word..                                                April 1998 Dead Calm A flying lesson is essential for PC maintenance. Pentium II processors use lots of power. This means they generate lots of heat.   I notice Sprint has tacked $0.55 per month as a regulatory fee on all long distance customer accounts. Clever -- in view of the fact that the assessment for SLC and RHC is a gross receipt tax, which the FCC did not think, would be passed onto the end customer as a flat tax. C'est la vie. And how 'bout the minimum fee that interexchange carriers (including AT&T) charge if you don't make any long distance calls? I'm told by those who don't pay, that nothing happens when they don't pay the charge. Tried to call MCI for prices charged by 10-321. I'm seeing bills which average 7.5 cents per minute nationwide. Not bad. A TISKET, A TASKET, AN FCC BASKET It was with mixed emotions I learned a new term: Basket. It is sort of like a bucket, in which programmers hide things. A bucket is a tiny pool, but different. This small pool, now called a basket, is where all expenses for a given type of investment cost are compiled to show the total dollars for that investment. There is a switching basket. And a tandem switching basket, which includes SS7. And so on. How many of you have seen a UNE? The Nevada commission used it at least once on every page for 35 pages in a recent order, but never said what it was. I suspect the folk who prepared the order figured we all knew what it was. Let's see -- it's got two vowels, so it's a word? Did someone say Scrabble? COOLING OFF Eons ago, one of my jobs as a sales rep for Rotron was to proffer engineering information on use of fans and blowers. Not many really understand how cfm and static pressure correlate. I do not see competent cooling in lots of stuff we come into daily contact with -- like ball vs. sleeve bearings, and how to keep you PC cool. Pentium II processors use lots of power. This means they generate lots of heat. I've seen Pentium CPU's lurking behind the wires and drives, with the case removed to allow it to run cool. Put the case "on," and the resulting heat buildup can cause CD drives to stop -- not to mention reduce the CPU life. Intel specs say, do not install the chip except on a heat sink with the proper amount of "goose grease" to allow the heat to flow to the heat sink.  But the heat sink must have a source of air to allow the heat to be vented to the world. More than a few PC's are now being configured with dual Pentium II processors. Two of these guys with the power supply to run them means HOT. Some companies, such as Dell, do a good job of heat dissipation. However, it's best to pressurize the cabinet with inlet air being pulled through a filter. The fan has to overcome the resistance of the filter and the resistance of the air to exit the cabinet. While are at it, 5-inch drives must mount vertically, so the disk won't accumulate dust. Actually, dust contamination should guide all electronics design. One of the best air-moving lessons available are videos of helicopters crashing because of what is called "settling with power." When a chopper is in dead-calm air hover, the big fan on top is turning. It pulls air down. After the air passes through the blades, it follows the path of least resistance, which is to go back up -- just outside the blades. The air then again finds the path of least resistance, and goes back down through the blades. The churning air looks like a donut around the circle of the lifting chopper blades. The machine will start to settle when the donut deprives the helicopter blades of air required to keep the machine airborne. That's when maximum power and collective is not enough. For every helicopter, there is a graph showing height vs. horizontal distance vs. air speed. The inside of the graph is called the "Dead Man's Curve." In a dead-calm situation at say, 300 feet above the ground, there have been and will continue to be more than a few helicopter settling with full power as the pilot faces the high probability of death. That big noise fan didn't keep the pilot cool. Not will any quiet fan keep your PC or switch (properly) cool.   Copyright 1998 by A. W. Brothers and Americas Network magazine. All rights reserved.   © 1997, 1998, 1999 Beehive Telephone Co.