3DO ZONE Forums

Hi folks,

I just joined, and this is a great resource for the 3DO!

Long story short, I had a 3DO when it first came out and was the only one in my circle of friends that had one. Loved it! Twisted is my favorite game. I just recently got a hold of an FZ-1.

The cooling fan is noisy. I don't remember if this is by design or if the one in my FZ-1 is getting old. I suspect the latter. I haven't opened up the FZ-1, yet. I am looking for guidance or instructions for removing and reinstalling a new fan (if possible). I build PCs, so I know what I'm doing in the case of a fan replacement job. How easy is it to open the case? What are the steps? What are the fans specs that would be a direct replacement? Is there anyting tricking inside to look out for?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Cheers!

It's dead easy to open the case, undo the screws underneath and lift the top half of the casing off.

I've always rememered the fan being fairly loud.

It is fairly loud, but more because of the architecture of the shell (*EDIT*: "case", sorry!), causing noisy air-flows.

I once replaced the fan - but didn't find one which uses the exact voltage
of the original fan (9V, if I recall correctly).

I took a standard PC fan which is supposed to work with 12V.
Mechanically it was identical, but due to the 3 Volts less it runs
a bit slower and produces less noise that way.
But I needed to solder the plug of the old fan to the cable of the
new fan, because otherwise it wouldn't have fit to the mainboard.

Then I used a bit of

http://www.tesa.de/consumer/tesamoll/fe ... ung,c.html

(how do you call that in English? Rubber insulation?) to glue it on top of
the new fan, so that the upper shell of the 3DO case could rest on it - pretty similar to the original fan,
where also something was glued upon.

Awesome - Thanks for all the replies. I'll let 'er run stock for now, until I no longer here that fan running on start-up. At that point, I'll perform the surgery. For now, I'll just turn up the surround sound and continue to enjoy some retro 3DO gaming with my daughter.

Cheers!