Altitude?

[Adam Bridge]

I have to think it's the disk drive that's giving the altitude
limitation. I have a reason for this.

We have a Garmin 2620 GPS unit that we carry with us in our cars when
we travel. Works great EXCEPT when venturing over 10,000 feet.
Crossing the Beartooth Pass in northern Wyoming, and over the summit
of I-70 east of Vail, CO our Garmin unit failed when it tried to
refresh its displayed information. The unit has an internal disk drive
with all the mapping data in it. When we descended below 9,000 feet or
so it began to work again.

Now I think that's not a Good Thing in a portable navigation unit but
it's what I think happened. I have to call Garmin and see if they
can/will do something about it.

Adam Bridge


On 9/6/07, LuKreme <kremels at kreme.com> wrote:
> On 6-Sep-2007, at 00:40, Eugene wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 08:50:12PM CDT, R.L. Grigg
> > <newslists at autonomy.caltech.edu> wrote:
> >> On Sep 4, 2007, at 6:43 PM, Hacker Scot wrote:
> >>> - Maximum altitude: 10,000 feet
> >>>
> >>> ??? What components in a computer are altitude sensitive?
> >>
> >> We've been told that the thinner air doesnt have the same cooling
> >> effectiveness so it will likely casue overheating even when the
> >> fan blows
> >> on full.
> >
> > The less dense the air is, the less number of "air" molecules,
> > therefore the less amount of matter available to carry away heat
> > via kinetic energy.
>
> I don't buy that argument at all.  It's much more likely to be
> something like the reduced air pressure increases the chances that
> the r/w heads on the hard disk will 'crash' to the disc surface, as
> someone else mentioned.
>
> However, in an imac, there could easily be other components that are
> altitude sensitive (the bulb for the LCD perhaps?); so it's hard to
> guess.
>
> I do note that Maxtor hard drives list a maximum altitude of 3048
> meters, which must be just about exactly 10,000 feet.
>
> My Seagate has a non-operating max altitude of 12,000 meters, but
> that is NON-operating.
>
> --
> "There will always be women in rubber flirting with me."
>
>
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