[starbuck3733t]

Mild setback

Grump grump grumpy I am...

So I was fitting the stealth activity LEDs yesterday (which I got most of which done, SCSI HDDs, IDE HDDs, DVD-read) and made the cables and fitted them into my highly modified HP CDRW-8X SCSI optical drive only to find out that the only LED that lit was the red one for "WRITING". Of course I know exactly why this is happening, and the fact that I didn't think of it when I was doing the mod is a bit shocking... I usually think of these things.

The problem was that the drive originally carried Green and Red LEDs to indicate disc in/activity and writing w\ another red one for tray lock (meaning you try to eject it whilst it's writing)... well, what's the diff between a green, red, or orange LED and a blue/white, other than the color? The forward voltage and current required to get it to light. Dooy! :duh:

So I crack open the drive and track down the current limiting resistors (small ass surface mount ones) which are 330 ohms being fed 5V. Well no wonder the white/blue ones aren't lighting! So I solder in a 150 ohm resistor in parallel w\ the existing 330, making ~103 ohms. This is a fine number, seeing as I usually wire them up with 82 ohm resistors for maximum brightness. Stuff the whole thing back together and fire it back up in the rig. No lights still. WTF. Oh .... utoh.... crap! NO BOOT! (Hung at the drive being detected on the 29160 controller, passed the post OK.)

Pull the drive and disassemble... detect distinct smell of cooked electronics. crap. Not sure what I cooked (I can't find which part the smell is coming off of) but the tray won't eject. I suspect I fried the some of the motor drivers, which is causing the main controller chip to hang on the drive's motion test (which all drives do as soon as they get power) and then not be detected by the SCSI controller as the drive controller is still hung up in the motion test.

Short story..I killed it.

But no fear... I rooted through my drawers and find a 48X Yamaha CDRW-F1 w\ SCSI backpack! (IDE -> SCSI converter) WOOOOOT!!! Cracked it open this morning at work after sorting out the backup software issues, and discovered that its already got a blue activity LED in it, meaning it should happily light my white/blue ones w\o modding the current limiting resistor. However, it doesn't appear to have a tray lock LED, or if it does have a spot for one, it's not installed. W\ any luck I can get that installed tonight while watching the Redskins game on the TV.

:thumb: :dremel: