I'd like to purchase large rectangular LEDs like those that were used in the ancient Commodore 1571 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives...
Here is a pic so you can get an idea
Red and green would suffice.
Are these still manufactured and any US mail order where I can order some?
Thanks in advance FC
ancient Commodore 1571 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives...
Note that there are 2x5mm, 2.5x7mm, and 2.5x7.6mm LED's. You might want to measure the display area on the Commodore LED's before buying.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
the ancient Commodore 1571 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives...
The CBM 1571 leds were 14mm to 15mm wide (I had to measure from the outside, didn' t open up the unit to check).
So far the largest wide LEDs I' ve found are these, which are 11mm wide
and described as "Side-Looker LED"
Any other sources/suggestions for large rectangular LEDs? -TIA...
FC
in the ancient Commodore 1571 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives...
<Thanks for the link Jeff!. I'm discovering a lot about large LEDs. :) Like you'll find in my 2nd post/follow-up, I did measure it and they were pretty large, I'm not sure if anybody still makes rectangular LEDs as large.
Yet, something in me tells me "large leds are the only kind of LEDs that there should be". ;)
My goal is to put such large LEDs as HDD activity indicators on my PCs and external hard drives. :)
So, again, thanks for the pointers...
Regards, FC
used in the ancient Commodore 1571 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives...
outside, didn' t open up the unit to check).
or cut and polish blocks of translucent coloured plastic and set any old LEDs inside
Ignoring your tongue in cheek... There are what can only be described as "pinhead" LEDs. My notebook computer uses them, and they're elegant-looking. Of course, if you have a "large" rectangular hole to fill, then a large, rectangular LED is the only thing that will do.
"N_Cook" wrote in news:jtokcf$tj$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
I was going to say that a lot of LED indicators use specially shaped clear or translucent lenses, and an ordinary LED behind them. They are known as "light pipes" in the trade:
Doug White
m
That would be my guess for the Commodore LEDs. No LED maker potted up LEDs in that form factor at that time.
They don't. I don't have a Commodore 1571 handy to dissect, but as others have suggested, it's not a packaged LED, but rather a block of plastic with an LED inserted into a hole in back.
external hard drives. :)
I presume that there's some reason the indicator needs to be so large. Personally, I find the flashing lights to be somewhat of a distraction, especially at night. The blue LED's are the worst. I have partly covered the blue LED's on my Dell Opti 960 and DirecTV DVR to prevent being blinded at night. If I turn off the room lights, both LED's would be bright enough to read by in the dark.
I've had some minor experience with illuminating blocks of plastic in the 1970's. I was helping design a radio, that included a molded plastic front panel strip with imbedded T-1 3/4 LEDs. The initial design looked awful. The lighting was horribly uneven and not very bright because of color mismatch. Eventually, the mechanical designer (not me) had to sit down and calculate the light distribution and exact color of the plastic, in order to produce a usable product. I suspect you may need to go through the same process with your plastic block. For example, the block may be large enough that two LED's are required. Polished sides of the block look very different from diffused (sanded) sides.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
as
Sorry to contradict you, but I've just dissected my Commodore Amiga 1200 an= d it had the same kind of large LEDs (evidently Commodore engineers had a t= hing for large LEDs and I do agree that pulsating large LEDs while Amiga ap= ps were loading from Floppy had a nice hypnotic effect on one's brain ;).
Those are marked "LED 1" "LED 2" and "LED 3" on a small PCB hooked by 4 wir= es to the A1200 motherboard. Now, tearing apart and crippling Amiga 1200 co= mputers doesn't sound like my idea of fun to source these large LEDs. ;)
For comparison's sake, I included a US quarter coin on one of the pics.
If you look at picture #3, you will see these are not the usual "plastic in= front of a led" but actually if there are 2 leds inside, these were manufa= ctured as a single piece, you cannot "detach" the leads from the plastic, a= nd the connection pins appear from between the rectangular plastic block. T= hat leads me to believe these LEDs were mass manufactured...
I could be wrong, of course... but it strikes me as very odd that CBM would= go the great length of producing LEDs in-house from standard LED parts....= (or perhaps MOS did?).
FC
s and external hard drives. :)
. RWhatever floats your boat Jeff. I respect your dislike of leds. But LEDs ha= d a purpose: to give a visual clue about what is going on with a certain sy= stem component. So if the software had an unexpected pause but you saw a LE= D blinking on the CD-Reader you said to yourself "ok, it' s reading data fr= om the CD". Or, coversely, when there was a pause in software or you starte= d a disk-intensive operation you could look at a PC and say "oh, it' s doin= g disk I/O still".
Plus, LEDs were easily viewable because Destkops were, as its name implied,= on top of DESKS, so just by looking at the side of the monitor, there usua= lly was the PC with its HDD actvity LEDs.
Nowadays, my PC is a mid-tower server tucked under the desk. So while the M= OBO still provides a "HDD activity" led, it' s about 5 inches from the floo= r level and at such angle that I'd have to lay on the floor to see it. That= 's when this idea of installing large LEDs on top of the case started, as I= remembered I never had a problem seeing disk activity on either my 1571 FD= Ds or my Commodore Amiga....
If you still think this is a silly idea, consider why people write SOFTWARE= to simulate the HDD led blinks on screen widgets or using the keyboard LED= s...
How to move your HDD leds to some more visible position using keyboard LEDs
Windows HDD systray indicator
However, since I run several different OSs, I' d like my "solution" to be h= ardware, not software based...
I hope you get the idea by now... FC
Sorry, I think I pasted the wrong URLs, I think these direct ones are better
FC
I'll confess that I use the LED disk activity indicator in exactly that manner. When the machine seems to stall, the first thing I check is the HD LED flashing. In the bad old days, I would just listen for HD noises, but that's no longer possible. Drives are very quiet today. After the HD LED, I look at the CPU activity graph, but there's no LED for that.
My mini-tower (Dell Optiplex 960) at home, and office (Dell Optiplex
755) are both on the table. I don't like reaching under the desk to feed the DVD drive a platter, or try to find the SD card slot. I also don't like turning my machine into a vacuum cleaner for floor dust. However, there are plenty of users that prefer to run the machine on the floor, especially if they're limited on desk space.Yep. If you want to see what a computer product is deficient, just look at the utilities provided by third party developers.
I downloaded FloatLED. Very nice except that there's no CD/DVD or USB flash drive monitoring.
Ok, I understand. However, I don't understand why the illuminated area needs to be so large. A small, wide illumination angle LED should be adequate.
Please note that my comments on LED's were in refernce to excessively bright and flashing LED's. I find them irritating and distracting. However, I can tolerate those that don't flash often, or are not overly bright.
Yep. Incidentally, you might get better answers in news:sci.electronics.design.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Yes, probably. I just loved the large rectangular LEDs on the Commodore 1571s and the Amigas... so when the need came the only larger-than-normal LEDs that came to my mind were those...
Yes, high-power or high-brightness LEDs are a pain. The large LEDs in Commodore computers had just the right power and brightness not to be a pain...
You have been of great help and made me think about my design. Thanks for that, Jeff!
FC
Well, I'm not having any luck finding anything even similar. Perhaps making your own might be more useful. It took me a while to guess how Commodore made their diffusers. I originally thought they had started with a block of plastic, drilled holes, and crammed in some T-1 3/4 LED's. However, there's no visible dividing line between the LED and the diffuser, so that's not how it was done.
My next guess(tm) is that they molded the diffuser around the LED's using something like this stuff:
Get a sample from the manufactory, make a suitable rectangular mold, find some suitable LED's, mold, polish, and it should work. Watch out for the beam angle on the LED's to make sure you get even frontal coverage. Google for "LED molding compound" and Plexiglas LED molding compounds.
-- # Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060 # 831-336-2558 # http://802.11junk.com jeffl@cruzio.com # http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS
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