Hello! Thanks everybody for your suggests both technical and philosophical.

I agree moving the PSU outside will dent the Mac's compactness and that would be a shame. But it would free air space in the case and because he/she/it is rather elderly, he/she/it won't be moved apart from dusting. The Mac still looks wonderful even if its/his/her case in now yellow(ish) with age. (A platinum case SE would look even better........)

Does this mean you guys consider the Mac mini not so mini with its external power brick?

The Mac was on for about two hours when the fail occurred. On the right hand side the case was very, very warm to the touch.

Anyway I would like to open up he/she/it anyway because I have another 2Mb of RAM to install.

I shall check out the links.

Thanks again.