Mysterious ThinkPad noises

[<Dunaway_Wesley/furman@furman.edu>]

Item Subject: Message text
A very strange thing happened today.  Has anyone else had
this happen to them?

The ThinkPad 750 monochrome with 20MB RAM and a 170MB hard
drive, attached to a Port Replicator I, had been running
OS/2 Warp nonstop for days in my dorm room.  No shutdowns, a
couple of warm boots, but basically uninterrupted operation.
 Computer was sitting close to an open window.  Outside
temperature here is about 40-60 degrees F.  There's a heater
under the window, so the ThinkPad wasn't really cold.  About
2pm today I notice a noisy grinding sound coming from the
computer.  Further investigation reveals that it's coming
from the hard drive.  Shut down and detach from Port
Replicator.  Noise persists.  Boot to floppy with hard drive
removed to make sure that it was the source of the noise. 
It was.  Put the hard drive back in and turn the ThinkPad
back on.  All the data on the drive seems to be there.  At
6pm I put the ThinkPad in my bag and head for a computer
lab.  It's my job to supervise the lab.  Unfortunately the
lab only has Macs.  Need a real computer for serious work
when I'm in there.  Plug in the AC adapter (after all, I
stay here for 5 hours) and boot the ThinkPad.  The noise is
still there.  Start thinking of how I'll have to wait for a
new hard drive over Christmas break.  About 9pm the sound
stops.  Now the hard drive makes the same old whine it used
to.  What gives?

Unrelated noise problem: Probably 5 or 6 times over the life
of the computer (about 10 months now, all under heavy use),
the built-in speaker has started cackling like an old AM
radio.  Every time it happened I was running OS/2 2.1.  Of
course, that's the only OS I ran for a long time. 
Restarting the system made the noise go away.  Annoying, but
certainly not worth taking the computer in over.  Again, I
would appreciate knowing if anyone has experienced either of
these problems.

I really can't complain too much about durability problems. 
I know a fellow with a TI TravelMate, and his computer has
been known to just quit working for days at a time.  On the
other hand, I know someone with an ancient Compaq 386/16. 
It's really sad that their passive-matrix mono screen looks
better than mine.  PowerBook mono screens look very nice,
also.  The best mono screen I ever saw was while I was
shopping for my ThinkPad.  It was a Compaq, and it actually
had an active matrix *mono* screen.  It really was
beautiful.  To my eyes, less stressful than color LCD
screens.  I probably would have bought that computer, but I
couldn't get that screen with anything better than a 25MHz
processor.  Oh well, I guess I'm stuck with this lousy
screen for a while.  Not too big a deal as I use an IBM 15"
color CRT most of the time.  I went with a cheap LCD but a
nice monitor.  Of course, I thought I could upgrade to a
color LCD later, but all I've heard about this is that it
costs $3000.  Has anyone heard about this upgrade? 
Upgrading the display is on the bottom of my list of toys to
buy, but I'm sure there are some users who would appreciate
the information

Wesley T. Dunaway (dunaway@s9000.furman.edu)