Display, track, record, alert, on readings from the temperature
sensors that come built-in to Apple computers running Mac OS X.
Impetus for the creation of this piece looks like it was the fiasco of
Apple's insulting and sophomoric air cooling system for the Mirror
Door models PowerMac G4. The Mirror Door was one of the first models
to have a temperature sensor standard, but also no supplied utility to
access it. Updates to "Temperature Monitor" steadily added more
supported models, access to additional sensors, and new features. The
original version was a single app. After a while, it was divided into
two apps "Temperature Monitor" and "Temperature Monitor Lite" in which
the Lite versions are officially contained here alongside their full
featured counterparts. Lite places readouts in the menubar and does
little else, without occupying dock space or system resources.
The Mirror Door 2003 built in cpu sensor is located outside the cpu
chip, on the cpu "card" therefore it is mainly an air temperature
sensor in which 120-125.F is dangerously high. Anyone can read the MDD
sensor WITHOUT Bresink's software, with the Terminal command:
ioreg -n AppleCPUThermo | grep temperature
..and then divide the number returned by /256 for degrees Celsius, or
divide by /142 +32 for approximate degrees Fahrenheit.
System failure occurs on my PowerMac G4 when Temperature Monitor 4.8
(main and Lite) and probably other version numbers are used in
conjunction with specific old hard-drives, even though this PowerMac
G4 doesn't support SMART drive temperature monitoring. I have a 500GB
SATA Hitachi Deskstar manufactured 2008 (maybe there was a 'firmware'
update for the drive?). OS X 10.4.11 Server and 10.4.8 Client both
tested locking-up with this hard-drive attached. I can set the drive
polling preference to 'x' minutes and then cause the crash to happen
after 'x' minutes elapse. Temperature Monitor v4.2 and less aren't
exhibiting this problem with this Mac+drive.
On my 2007 Mac with SSD, Temperature Monitor 4.8 shows an SSD readout
but it for some reason is always wrong, never deviates from steady
30.C - this Mac has numerous other sensors functioning.
Compatibility
Architecture: PPC x86 (Intel:Mac)
OS X 10.2.5 or later for v4.2 and less.
OS X Tiger minimum for Temperature Monitor v4.8
