Joined: 13-Feb-2005 Posts: 215
From: United Kingdom
I have always found it annoying that my A1200 had the same colour LED for the hard-drive and floppy drive. It makes it harder to notice which drive is being accessed, so I decided to have a go at replacing it.
Given that the LEDs are a custom size and the chips are moulded into them, I decided to look at using my 3D printer. Measuring off the original sizes i created a model and printed it using clear(ish) PLA. I removed the HDD LED and soldered in 2 red 3mm LEDs and replaced the resistor to account for the change in forward voltage (2V as opposed to the 1.7V the originals are).
Putting it all back together, you can see it is different (as you can see the layers from the printing) and when illuminated there are 2 'hot spots' where it doesn't defuse as much.
That said I am more than happy now I can easily see when the HDD is being accessed :D
Smartroad was startled by the success of his 3D printing
He was startled even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute’s Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smart-ass.
Actually this was attempt 3. The first two kept breaking when I tried to mount the LEDs LOL
If anyone is wondering (no, you probably aren't I know) I went for red as I find blue tacky these days and also not actually possible without more fudging. The forward voltage of a blue LED is normally around 3-3.3V, given the LED circuit board has the LEDs in series this would be 6-6.6V needed to drive both LEDs. Given they are run by 5V this means it isn't possible to run blues anyway (easily).
Red just felt more in line with the yellow and green already there as it would have been easily available when the Amiga was released. Was it also used on the A500?
Last edited by smartroad on 09-Apr-2017 at 05:55 PM.
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