Is there any IDE to CF adaptor that supports HDD activity LED? I am about to buy one of these but I hate making any tradeoffs and would like to have flickering LED still intact.
Some have LED on board like this one but generally speaking these adapters also work with the normal motherboard function. Like you don't usually connect the front panels LED to the HDD itself but to the motherboard
I have a pair of similar adapters, I can confirm the LEDs work fine and are useful for watching the IDE activity. My only complaint about boards like this is there are a bunch of exposed pins and solder joints. I wrapped mine in kapton tape to make them more inert.
These days I use one of these Syba dual CF adapters. They have the LEDs and have a plastic case, so no risk of shorting. I bought a slimline 44-pin to 40-pin adapter to use it in my normal desktop rig (they're designed for laptops).
Whether the adapter has a LED output or not shouldn't really matter - they're designed to replace HDDs which never had a LED output on them, it comes from one of the IDE interface pins and is provided by a header on the motherboard or interface card.
I think there are rare circumstances where perhaps an expansion card doesn't support the blinkenlights header. In those cases, a CF adapter with built-in LEDs can be handy. They can also just be fun to look at, even if redundant.
jmarsh wrote on 2023-12-12, 04:08:Whether the adapter has a LED output or not shouldn't really matter - they're designed to replace HDDs which never had a LED output on them, it comes from one of the IDE interface pins and is provided by a header on the motherboard or interface card.
Correct ~ I use an adapter with no LED --- HDD activity LED on case works as normal =)
Cosmic wrote on 2023-12-12, 04:20:I think there are rare circumstances where perhaps an expansion card doesn't support the blinkenlights header. In those cases, a CF adapter with built-in LEDs can be handy. They can also just be fun to look at, even if redundant.
But in that case you're not making a tradeoff as suggested by the OP, since the original IDE HDD wouldn't have had a (standard) LED header on it either.
Worst case, you could use a cable to connect the CF adapter to the port and tap into the /ACTIVE line to connect a LED (with a series resistor - that's a 5V signal).
I've had several different versions, mostly with bracket. There's all seemed to support the HDD activity led the same way any case led would. They often blink synchronous in fact 😀
Stuck at 10MHz...
