I have some test equipment I am using to check the drift of some
oscillators. At the minute I am just evaluating the limits of the test
equipment. Ideally this should be in a temperature controlled
environment, but I don't have one. So I am thinking of doing one on the
cheap.

I'm wondering if I can use my Sun as a computer controlled heater, to
stabilise the temperature! Using as heating elements the 4 CPUs, and
adjusting the heat they produce by the amount of work they do, and/or
taking them offline. (I bet you have not known of an idiot trying that
one!!!)

Would taking the CPUs offline make them produce less heat or not? I know
when the Sun is doing a lot of CPU intensive stuff, it certainly runs
warmer.

Here's some data of room temperature (the first graph) where I purposely
induced large and rapid changes.

http://www.g8wrb.org.uk/useful-stuff...temp-data.html

If you look at the second graph, you will not the output from the test
equipment changed from about 99.8ns to 99.65ns (a change of 150ps) some
20 minutes into the test. Some 5.5 hours into the test I induced a large
temperature change, but the test equipment showed no sign of changing.
I'm not sure if its large changes, or large rate of changes that makes
the test equipment start giving poor results.

I'm wondering if I can get the Sun to do more/less work, to help
stabilise the temperature.