How temperature sensetive is the PC?

[per]

Last winter, I had some problems with my PC/XT. Problably due to low temperature (Sometimes as low as 12 Degrees Celcius). When I booted it yesterday, all the problems where gone (I guess the fan in the PCU is supposed to make a lot of noise).

So: How temperature sensetive is actually the PC(/XT/AT)?

[mbbrutman]

You could refer to the Guide to Operations or the Technical Reference to get the exact specs of each component when they were new ...

Or put another way, nobody knows. Things change with age. If you want to keep it running run it at room temperature, not in temperature extremes.

[vwestlife]

Stepper motor hard drives, such as the typical MFM and RLL drives installed in old PCs, are the most temperature sensitive component. The arm which positions the read/write heads on the drive platters is purely mechanical and has no way to compensate for how the platters slightly contract when cold and slightly expand when warm. As a result, if you write to the drive when it's stone cold and then try to read back that file after the drive has fully warmed up, the positioning of the heads might be off enough to cause an error.

The remedy is to simply wait until the hard drive has reached "operating temperature" before writing to it; just turn it on and let it sit. Tandy used to have a big orange warning sticker on their computers advising you to wait 30 minutes after turning it on before formatting the hard drive. I'd advise the same wait period for writing any kind of data to the drive, especially if the computer is not being operated at typical room temperature.

Newer voice coil drives automatically compensate for temperature and are immune to this problem (within their rated specs for temperature extremes, at least). There are some voice coil MFM/RLL drives and some stepper motor IDE drives, but as a general rule, MFM/RLL hard drives are stepper motor and IDE drives are voice coil. SCSI drives can be either depending on their age. When in doubt, get the drive's make and model number and look up the specs online.

[squirrel-steam]

According to Upgrading and repairing pc's, 5th edition, by Scott Muller, the operating temp of a IBM pc/xt system is 60-90 degrees F, 8-80% relative humidity, operates up to 7000 feet above sea level.

by the way, 12C = 53.6F

[chuckcmagee]

Chuckle, yep, when my $1500 20MB drive got old, I had to let it warm up for at least 20 minutes before writing to it. Otherwise, after it warmed up, it could no longer read what had been written when it was just starting up and cold. This was a 1984 vintage drive. Geez, between the hard drive and my Leading Edge PC, it came to $3,000 in 1984 dollars. The good ol' days, ya right!

[Bungo Pony]

I've got a P133 sitting in my garage who's sole purpose is to play music. Being in Canada, it gets cold in the wintertime, and I've been able to run this thing at -30 degrees celcius. The only thing that fails on it at this temperature is the middle DVD drive (there's three installed).