HDD LED Lights

I was just wondering. would it make any sence to install a couple of LEDs on the IDE cables to know whether the empeg is accessing it's Hard Drives ? I know the player can display a little icon on the top right corner, but what if the player software is not running or what if the icon is not so accurate ?

I think it might be a neat feature to have the two lights blink as the empeg reads/writes to the drives.

idea originated from the XBox HDD light. check it out http://www.xbox-scene.com/articles/hdd-led.php

would it make any sence to install a couple of LEDs on the IDE cables to know whether the empeg is accessing it's Hard Drives

IMO, no. What would you gain from it? Das Blinkenlights?

Of course, it should be easly possible, and you can do what you want, but I can't see any use for it. Personally, I keep the hard drive icon(s) turned off, as I couldn't care less when it's accessing the drive.

The only use for it I could imagine is if you were desperate to know which of the two hard disks were being accessed at a given time.

IMO, The only useful LED wrt HDD status on the empeg would one that is one when one of the parititions is mounted RW so I'd know at a glance not to pull the power.

I couldn't care less about disk accesses otherwise - as long as everythings working correctly, who really gives a shit??? And if you suspect that there is a problem then the disk icon on the screen is going to be far more helpful than a disk access LED.

Don't take this pesonally, but I consider the whole concept of disk access LEDs outdated. Sure they may have performed some useful diagnostic function back in the dark ages, but now? PCs bios'es and OS'es tell you far more useful information. If they really do have to stay, can't they at least live in the case so we don't have to stare at them?

Now if we could get some LEDs (or, preferably, 12v light bulbs) to indicate the current statuses of the ARM registers, that would be cool.

IMO, The only useful LED wrt HDD status on the empeg would one that is one when one of the parititions is mounted RW so I'd know at a glance not to pull the power.

This is NOT A BAD IDEA, I really like it.

How about suggesting a Hijack feature for an optional "Write Enabled" indicator.

When the screen is on, there would be a blinking icon or something, similar to the player software's hard disk indicator. When the screen is off, the standby LED would pulse with a different pattern than normal to indicate write enabled.

maybe we can make the existing led to blink rapidly to indicate rw access or something ?

Right, that's what I mean.

However, that would only work if the unit is in standby mode. If the screen is on, the LED is off (as far as I know), so we would also need an icon on the screen for when the screen is on. I believe Hijack could do both.

They can be useful on Windows boxes to check whether it has really hung or whether the OS has gone off on a 30 second hard disk thrash.

Rob

Yeah, but we're talking about a real operating system, here.

But that's what the three finger salute is for

I too find it really useful on winders to have the hdd access lights, so I don't unnecessarily hit the power switch. Too bad my Compaq laptop lacks it.

I wish that the Empeg was a little more "computery". I don't really care for the boot logos, I'd rather see it display the linux boot text messages. I haven't yet researched if it can actually do this.

i'm not sure about laptop drives, but scsi drives usually have a hdd led pair grouped w/ the jumpers. if your laptop had it, how safe would it be to just graft on the pair to the empeg LED using wires?

I took a look at the IBM Travelstar specs, and they don't seem to have separate LED pins, but many desktop IDE drives do.

on 3.5 " drives wire number 39 sends the LED signals ... I actually managed to connect the XBOX's existing POWER light to wire 39 on the hdd to have it flash on RW ...

COOOOOL

I wonder if the same thing can be done with the small hdds ?

Yes.

I love the LEDs on my 'winders. The Linux boot text for Empegs is available on the serial console at boot time. We could try an have it appear on the screen as well (not hard with Hijack), but it would scroll so quickly as to not be overly useful, without adding a largish buffer and scrollback capability (again, easy, but it takes precious memory..).

Cheers