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HDD LED and Green PC on old boards

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First post, by iulianv

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Since I started playing with retro hardware a few months ago I've noticed that most old 386 and 486 boards don't have an HDD LED connector, and yet I remember all 286, 386 and 486 systems that I encountered back then had it... what am I missing?

Also, I've seen on some boards stuff like "Green PC connector" or "Green PC LED" - what are those?

A model that closely resembles two boards that I have, and that illustrates both my questions, is this one:

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/B/BE … -BEK-V429S.html

Reply 1 of 4, by Tetrium

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Maybe because they didn't have the harddrive controllers on the board but on separate I/O cards?

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Reply 2 of 4, by Mau1wurf1977

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Yea that's the most logical explaination...

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Reply 4 of 4, by iulianv

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Tetrium wrote:

Maybe because they didn't have the harddrive controllers on the board but on separate I/O cards?

I thought so too, but when I couldn't find a connector clearly labeled "HDD LED" on my I/O controller I panicked 😁. Looking closely through online docs I finally found it - sorry to have wasted forum server disk space and members' time on this...

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