Modding Nintendo Wii Style Slot Loading Drive?

[stuartwood89]

So I've been thinking of purchasing a slot loader for my desktop for a while now. And I was wondering if anyone has enough experience with the Wii to let me know if it is possible to implement the pulsing blue framing around the edge onto an ordinary slim laptop drive.

I've looked for a broken Wii on eBay, but they start at £50, which is way too much for the sake of some lights. I can't seem to find any spare parts like this on Google either. Is there a way of doing this myself?

Stu

[ry@n]

a lasercut loop of polished perspex with a few LEDs?

The perspex cover I made for mine had a similar effect even though the light source was some UV over spill.

[stuartwood89]

Originally Posted by ry@n

a lasercut loop of polished perspex with a few LEDs?

That's what I thought, but I'm thinking of the beveled edge that the Wii has. Also I'm not clear on how many LEDs are actually used in the Wii, or where they are positioned.

[731|\|37]

It may take some work to get it to look exactly how you want it to. I'd recommend getting the perspex and experimenting with a few yourself.

[stuartwood89]

Sounds like the plan. Anyone have any suggestions as to how I can get the pulsing effect? I'm looking for it to pulse when the drive is being accessed, but in a smooth fashion, not the randomised blinking you usually get with drives.

[731|\|37]

http://pinouts.ru/HD/AtaInternal_pinout.shtml

Gives you the full pinout of a PATA cable. Just glancing at it I'd say that pin 25 (/DIOR) would be your best bet. The diagram says is 'strobes' while it's reading. You'll have to figure out exactly what this means and then build a control circuit that holds your led pulse circuit on while this pin is 'strobing'. Remember of course that if you have more than one device on the IDE chain, taking this input from the motherboard won't be drive specific. It will take a tap directly on the drive itself if you want to light only that one.

EDIT:
/DIOR is a sync clock. It's falling edge signals the drive to write to the buss, and it's rising edge triggers latches on the controller to read in and hold the buss data until the next complete cycle replaces them with a second dataset.

Source: http://www.ele.uri.edu/courses/ele40...nd_ide/IDE.pdf

Good luck!

[stuartwood89]

The drive will be converted to SATA with a converter. Will this make much difference?

[731|\|37]

I'm not entirely sure, but I imagine the 'converter' will sit on the back of the drive and plug in to the IDE slot and then provide an SATA port? If so then you should still be able to tap the pin at the drive itself or the controller. I don't know exactly how they work but if they are supposed to seamlessly interface the two buses then it should be fully compatible with the ATA protocol.

In other words, the clock should still sync the mini controller on the card for data sent. Parallel to Serial conversion requires a mechanism like this to work properly.

What I think happens here is the Parallel device sends a dataframe down in parallel to the 'converter' which receives it, chops it up and sends it one bit at a time down the serial bus. This means it receives the block of data from the parallel device and push each bit through a shift register and down the serial line to the receiving controller. Give or take here because the serial device may need to send it's data in frames which would contain header information, checksum data, and the like.

I could be wrong with the last part of the explanation but it was fun to think about

[stuartwood89]

It was also fun to read

[bradders2125]

By the looks of this picture:

It looks as though it uses one or two LED's at either end of a plexi piece. You can see a brighter light at either end.

A similar idea was used on the original xbox's ring of light. It was a circle of plexi with 'wings' to the tricolor LED's.

[AJB2K3]

Wouldn't the simplest idea be to just solder a led to the drives led connection point?
Worst case you don't risk blowing up a drive channel you just damage the drive.

[731|\|37]

Originally Posted by AJB2K3

Wouldn't the simplest idea be to just solder a led to the drives led connection point?
Worst case you don't risk blowing up a drive channel you just damage the drive.

Originally Posted by stuartwood89

Sounds like the plan. Anyone have any suggestions as to how I can get the pulsing effect? I'm looking for it to pulse when the drive is being accessed, but in a smooth fashion, not the randomised blinking you usually get with drives.

[AJB2K3]

WTF?

Maybe some sort of capacitor to smoothen out the turnoff?

[stuartwood89]

I really appreciate the help so far guys.

[Computer_Tinker]

Stuartwood89,

My suggestion would be to purchase some blue plexi and follow these steps...

1) measure the plexi the size you need
2) drill a series of holes, (small) in a line the length of slot drive
3) using a cone bit on a dremel tool on low speed apply a little pressure to create a beveled look.
4) using square LED's, mount each side (top and bottom) using hot glue or superglue.
5) wire up accordingly to a 12v rail and it should glow like that of a Wii.

Hope this helps.

http://www.estreetplastics.com/Color...eets_s/109.htm

[Computer_Tinker]

Heres a video link of a Wii teardown...this might help...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kihXP9WYhLc

Another site shows the back of the faceplate:
http://www.informit.com/content/imag...s/wiifig06.jpg

Heres a link where you can get different color faceplates:
http://www.game-accessory.com/produc...JT-4401102.htm