Just had an idea.

[xmastree]

I'm not going to do it, this time... but maybe someone else might like to.

I was looking at my laptop and I noticed that all the LEDs are together on the edge. On a regular PC the power and hdd are together, but the CDs, card reader etc. tend to be on their respective devices.

How about rerouting them so they're all in a row along the top edge? Especially for stealthed drives. I'm sure someone has already done this...

[DaveW]

Yup. I'm doing something similar. Popular mod amongst those comfortable with electronics.

-Dave

[Nagoshi]

Yea, and if for an X reason you need to RMA your DVD drive, or change it, you'll need to mod it again... or the RMA won't work....

Nice idea!

[DaveW]

Or if you're clever about it, you'll make it a connector system and thus saving yourself a lot of hastle...

All you'd need to do is solder the connecter to the drive, and you could happily switch around components.

-Dave

[xmastree]

Either way you'll blow the warranty unless you can do it without disturbing the seals...

Dave's right (apart from his spelling ;)), connectors would make it easier.

Do hard drives still have their own LEDs on board? I don't think they do any more... Shame, since you could have individual lights, one for each disk.
Wouldn't it be nice if they had LED pins in there with the master/slave select?

I remember once, advising someone who wanted a way to mount the light on the front without disturbing the drive in any way. I suggested fibre optics.
Pull one strand from your mum's old fibre optic lamp and tape or hot glue one end of it so that it picks up the light from the onboard LED.

[DaveW]

(apart from his spelling

One word man, one word! Anything else is because i'm British and spell everything right!

One of the lines on the IDE ribbon is a busy signal, you can tap it without too much difficulty...here's the link here (http://case-mods.linear1.org/hdd-header-hardcore/). It's much harder with SATA drives im afriad.

-Dave

[DaveW]

(apart from his spelling

One word man, one word! Anything else is because i'm British and spell everything right!

One of the lines on the IDE ribbon is a busy signal, you can tap it without too much difficulty...here's the link here (http://case-mods.linear1.org/hdd-header-hardcore/). It's much harder with SATA drives im afriad.

-Dave

[xmastree]

One of the lines on the IDE ribbon is a busy signal, you can tap it without too much difficulty...here's the link here (http://case-mods.linear1.org/hdd-header-hardcore/).Ooh, <saves link> good one. It seems it would be easy to isolate each drive on a common cable too. Nice. Do you know if that works for optical drives too? since they usually have onboard activity lights, they might not use pin 39 at all. I'm sure my hdd light doesn't flash when the DVD is running.

It's much harder with SATA drives im afriad.I'll bet it is. :(