Hey, i remember reading an article on bit tech a long while ago about a circuit that would make a series of LEDs turn on when the hard drive light was off, then change to another series of LEDs when the hard drive light was on (that way you could make the lighting change colours with the hard drive light). Now, i'm not sure if linear did the mod, but i checked out his website as well and couldn't find anything. Does anyone remember the article I'm talking about?
I vaguely recall a cool acrylic led array or something. Might not be the same thing. Wish I could recall exactly what it was. Maybe someone else who possesses a little better cognitive ability will chime in.
Well, it almost seems to have gotton lost when they changed over the site design. Hum. I'm still searching, and i'll post the article if i find it.
It was a macroman circuit, and tbh that Gideontech inverter design won't deliver the current for several LEDs in parallel. A slight improvement would be to parallel the 6 inverters, but the darlington in the Bit circuit is far more capable.
kind of off topic but it would be a cool mod to have a row of LED's up the side of an acrylic case and have them light like a bar graph of hard disk activity or a niterider effect which has it's speed controlled by the rate of pulses from the hard disk light. Unfortunatly usless for me as my hard drive light is on all the time due to some kind of fault with the SIS IDE driver!
You sure its the driver? I'm under the impression that hard drive lights are completely hard drive driven - or else they wouldnt work while booting up the computer.
They're controlled by the IDE/SATA controller chip. You could integrate the pulses for a bar-graph or and use a LM3914/LM3915 to make a nice bargraph from them, or use a 4017 to make a 'moving dot' thing.... or even a voltmeter chip (using the integral) the to make a 7 segment "percentage of hdd usage" display or anything really
That's another wheel that's already been invented, another macroman mod. As Cinnander suggests, HDD activity triggers an integrator that feeds a bargraph chip. Using a mirrored display gives a KR effect. I think Metku Mods have a variation using a 4017, built into a keyboard to give a running ring of lights.
