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Remote CDROM activity LED? How?

S

SarverSystems

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 9, 2002
Messages
7,408
For those of you with stealthed drives, how do you handle the activity LED?

I see 3 possibilities:

#1 Forget about it, and pretend there is no activity LED.
#2 Mod the drive by removing the old LED, soldering wires to it, and mounting the LED elsewhere.
#3 Finding some pins on the back that correspond to the activity.

I am wanting to do #3.

Any ideas?

The CDRW in question has a bank of 6 pins to the left of the digital audio port. Probing those with a DMM provided very little information. 2 of the pins were 2.5V no matter what. And the other 4 pins were dead no matter what.
 
#2 is what I've done in the past. #3 requires you to solder some wires to the LED on front and string them to the rear pins on back so you can simply use a plug-in LED. #3 is the cleanest way if you're trying to be professional.

wait wait...this is a sarver thread? I thought you knew this already :D
 
I was hoping for some magical answer I guess.

I remembered there being a post a looooooong time ago about modding the IDE cable somehow. I could go that route I suppose.
 
The IDE cable mod never appealed to me.

I wish CDROM makers would get it together and start producing something for the modding crowd. Everyone else seems to see potential (ie. raptor drive windows), etc. Something as simple as having a remote LED pinout would be great.
 
I've modded a remote switch and LED to stealthed optical drives in the past. It's actually really easy to do - I think it took me about 20 mins last time.

Take the cover off and remove the board, locate where the LED is soldered to, desolder and remove. solder in two new wires and run along the underside of the PCB to the audio header. Here you have two options, you can cut through the traces on the PCB with a Stanley knife (you people use exacto knives I believe), or carefully snip the connectors away from the board and bend out a little. Either way, solder on your new wires (and preferably mark on the casing which is + and -), put everything back together. Take a HDD or power LED and header from an old case and simply plug in. Mount the LED where you want and you're done.

Easy as that. From memory you may be able to get away with only one wire for the LED positive, there should already be a negative on the audio header. It's also possible to leave the original LED there too, it's just a little easier to solder the new wires in if it's gone.

The switch was a little harder, but not too bad. I think I just used one wire for that too, and an existing earth. I'm pretty sure they short to earth. An old momentary power or reset switch is ideal for that. I just drilled a tiny hole in the side of the front case bezel, filed it square to fit the switch and Bob's your Uncle. Barely visible, but much more effective than pushing the drive cover to try and open it.
 
I don't need to mod the switch because pushing the cover works flawlessly.

I will look into using the audio header for my LED connections. Thanks for the idea.
 
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