Hypercube² Part II

MODDING: DVD DRIVE

Because the front bezel of the case has just a small slot for the DVD, it would be nice if a DVD would light up when you put it in. For this mod I have to give all the credit to Zapwizard: I used his excellent guide on backlighting a DVD drive and relocating of the eject button and activity light. I tried to do it a little differently, but not much. Instead of red LEDs I used bright white ones and I can assure you the drive still works.



The Pioneer 120S, a wonderful slot-load DVD drive. My initial idea was to make a window in it, but after opening it up, I saw it wasn\'t so spectacular (the drive isnt very visible). Thats why I used Zapwizard\'s guide - thanks Zap for the excellent tutorial :-)



I overexposed these pictures so you can see where I drilled the holes for the rear LEDs: three 5mm ultra-bright white LEDs. I then placed the LEDs and I want them to be on all the time, so this was easy. Only thing I was worried about was whether the white lights would interfere with the laser - the white light has also a red component to it.



Here are the 5mm LEDs soldered in place - I want to make a footnote to the guide of Zap: you have to mount the LEDs as low as possible, because otherwise the drive won\'t load a CD anymore. This is because the spring you can see in the picture above comes all the way back and it has to go over the LEDs. I found this out the hard way - I had to put them in twice :-( I had been looking for the problem of the loading over more than an hour...

I just soldered the LEDs to the back of the molex for power.



Here you see the soldered connections for the eject button (on the right) and the activity LED - I took the 5 volt from the back of the molex. I soldered everything onto the audio connector of the DVDROM drive because I wasn\'t going to use it and because I didn\'t have a spare one. All the cables are in place and I put a little electronic tape over the solder points. I don\'t want to have a shortcut under the hood ;-)



Same thing for the LEDs - a little bit of tape and I\'m sure I won\'t get sparks inside the drive.




The result is very pleasing. It isn\'t as bright as I expected but it will do. And guess what? The drive still reads DVD\'s and CD\'s - lucky me!
This mod isn\'t as difficult as it might appear - I really know nothing about electronics and I managed to pull it off.