That’s very cool, I was wondering if a Pi Pico could be used for something like this. My initial thoughts were to use a Pico to run an OLED panel showing HDD activity and Turbo status, a bit overkill, but if it can also do the audio then that would be a nice little add on.

make spinning sounds loud again! 🤣
nice project! not sure about using the spinning sound looping in the background but the head sounds are very nice!

I'm planning to make it very configurable so that anyone using this can easily change the HDD samples it uses or change other aspects. As from the comments on the video so far it's clear that everyone has their own preferences in this arena 😀

I've successfully tested it in my 386 and it was able to detect HDD LED activity to act as a trigger and then relay a signal to the PCs case HDD LED

I'm waiting for some additional parts to arrive from Pimoroni (small speaker, mount, jumper cables) along with a few eBay purchases (Molox to USB power & 3.5mm audio jacks). Once these arrive I'll clean up the prototype so it's more "production" ready.

I've decided to address both the mounting and power problems with a single solution, that being making use of a ISA board as shown in the image below

Thanks to Martin Niec at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284508460587 for these superb prototyping ISA PCBs

These provide 5v and ground connections through the ISA bus.

I've also purchased a new CompactFlash to IDE adapter and replaced the HDD LED with a connector so that I can link it to the PCB, rather than take it from the motherboard. This means that a passthrough approach isn't required and the PC can continue to drive the case indicator LEDs as normal. However I've also programmed the Pico to provide a replacement HDD LED output for those who wish to wire up their PC this way.

Once I've wired up the ISA board I'll post a new video of it in operation.

Finally a thanks to Ian Scott of PicoGUS fame https://github.com/polpo/picogus who has kindly shared his knowledge about interfacing with a Pi Pico over the ISA bus. For a future revision of this device it may be possible to detect HDD activity purely from the ISA bus within some systems.

I also like the idea of writing a utility that can talk with the Pico over the ISA bus to allow for configuration to be performed directly on the PC itself. Although that's really for a version 2 of this device, but it's nice to have idea for the future.

Great project--what's the status?

This project has on ice for a few years, due to events in my life. I'm happy to say that I've now resumed work

After some advice from Ian Scott of PicoGUS fame I've been investigating detecting HDD activity directly from the ISA bus, so that this becomes a plug and play device.

I purchased several TXS0108E level shifters to translate the ISA bus 5v to a safe 3.3v for the Pi Pico and wired up a breadboard to the A0 - A9 address lines along with IOR and IOW

After several wiring checks I felt brave enough to actually try it in my computer.

The following video demonstrates what happened on that first attempt!

https://youtu.be/V8H3NL-J_68?si=Dbhm6iBzVk_Q1NyU

After posting the previous video I found that one of the level shifters was faultly along with the next replacement I then used!

What followed was an exercise manually testing each of the ISA lines on the bench to validate the chips and lines were all working

Thankfully after all this I was able to return to my 386 PC and after adding in some additional code to ensure HDD activity only triggers after activity reaches a certain threshold. Although some finessing is still required, I'm proud to say that this is a successful proof of concept. HDD activity is being successfully captured by the Pico.

A video of this working is available from https://youtu.be/Tan_0qBtJHs

I've been continuing to prototype aspects of the project such as loading audio samples from an SD card so that it'll be easier for users to change the samples

I'm waiting for an Adafruit I2S MAX98357A to arrive to determine if that's an acceptable and cheaper audio out than the Pico Audio Pack i've used so far

Today I've been starting to create the prototype PCB so that I can create some units to send out to people who would like to help me test and refine the device

There are still some components to be placed on the PCB, so this is a work in progress.

I did however start to price up 20 x PCBs with the SMD components pre-assembled which came to about $60.

Before I go ahead and place the order with PCBWay would someone be able to validate my designs to ensure I've not made any fatal mistakes. This is my first time with KiCad and PCBWay

PCB design for the initial prototype is complete and sent off to PCBWay for manufacture.

To keep things are simple as possible for the initial I've changed all the components to be through hole. I'll move to surface mount and a more compact design to the final design.