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
http://koti.mbnet.fi/tsaarela/Amiga/10082011349.jpg

Red and green would suffice.

Are these still manufactured and any US mail order where I can order some?

Thanks in advance
FC

On Thu, 12 Jul 2012 22:34:44 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

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...

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=rectangular+l ed&_sacat=0

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
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Friday, July 13, 2012 2:34:44 AM UTC-3, wrote:
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
http://koti.mbnet.fi/tsaarela/Amiga/10082011349.jpg

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

http://www.kingbrightusa.com/categor...ker+LED&Page=1

and described as "Side-Looker LED"

Any other sources/suggestions for large rectangular LEDs? -TIA...

FC

On Friday, July 13, 2012 2:44:54 AM UTC-3, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jul 2012 22:34:44 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

>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...

<http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trks...p;_sacat=0>

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.

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

wrote in message
...
On Friday, July 13, 2012 2:34:44 AM UTC-3, wrote:
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
http://koti.mbnet.fi/tsaarela/Amiga/10082011349.jpg

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


http://www.kingbrightusa.com/categor...egory_name=KCS
ide-Looker+LED&Page=1

and described as "Side-Looker LED"

Any other sources/suggestions for large rectangular LEDs? -TIA...

FC


or cut and polish blocks of translucent coloured plastic and set any old
LEDs inside

Yet, something in me tells me "large LEDs are
the only kind of LEDs that there should be".

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 :

wrote in message
...
On Friday, July 13, 2012 2:34:44 AM UTC-3, wrote:
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
http://koti.mbnet.fi/tsaarela/Amiga/10082011349.jpg

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


http://www.kingbrightusa.com/categor...D&category_nam
e=KCS ide-Looker+LED&Page=1

and described as "Side-Looker LED"

Any other sources/suggestions for large rectangular LEDs? -TIA...

FC

or cut and polish blocks of translucent coloured plastic and set any
old LEDs inside

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:

http://www.ledtronics.com/Products/P...ls.aspx?WP=326

Doug White

On Jul 13, 6:17*am, Doug White wrote:
"N_Cook" wrote :



wrote in message
...
On Friday, July 13, 2012 2:34:44 AM UTC-3, wrote:
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
http://koti.mbnet.fi/tsaarela/Amiga/10082011349.jpg

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

http://www.kingbrightusa.com/categor...D&category_nam
e=KCS ide-Looker+LED&Page=1

and described as "Side-Looker LED"

Any other sources/suggestions for large rectangular LEDs? -TIA...

FC

or cut and polish blocks of translucent coloured plastic and set any
old LEDs inside

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:

http://www.ledtronics.com/Products/P...ls.aspx?WP=326


That would be my guess for the Commodore LEDs. No LED maker potted up
LEDs in that form factor at that time.

On Thu, 12 Jul 2012 22:49:29 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

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.

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.

My goal is to put such large LEDs as HDD activity indicators on my PCs and 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
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Friday, July 13, 2012 2:04:36 PM UTC-3, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jul 2012 22:49:29 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

>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.

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.

Sorry to contradict you, but I've just dissected my Commodore Amiga 1200 and it had the same kind of large LEDs (evidently Commodore engineers had a thing for large LEDs and I do agree that pulsating large LEDs while Amiga apps 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 wires to the A1200 motherboard. Now, tearing apart and crippling Amiga 1200 computers 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.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/88/cbmleds1.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/823/cbmleds2.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/26/cbmleds3.jpg/

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 manufactured as a single piece, you cannot "detach" the leads from the plastic, and the connection pins appear from between the rectangular plastic block. That 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

On Friday, July 13, 2012 2:04:36 PM UTC-3, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jul 2012 22:49:29 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

>My goal is to put such large LEDs as HDD activity indicators on my PCs and 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.

Whatever floats your boat Jeff. I respect your dislike of leds. But LEDs had a purpose: to give a visual clue about what is going on with a certain system component. So if the software had an unexpected pause but you saw a LED blinking on the CD-Reader you said to yourself "ok, it' s reading data from the CD". Or, coversely, when there was a pause in software or you started a disk-intensive operation you could look at a PC and say "oh, it' s doing 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 usually was the PC with its HDD actvity LEDs.

Nowadays, my PC is a mid-tower server tucked under the desk. So while the MOBO still provides a "HDD activity" led, it' s about 5 inches from the floor 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 FDDs 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 LEDs...

How to move your HDD leds to some more visible position using keyboard LEDs
http://www.instantfundas.com/2008/10...into-more.html

Windows HDD systray indicator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/activityindicat/

However, since I run several different OSs, I' d like my "solution" to be hardware, not software based...

I hope you get the idea by now...
FC

On Sunday, July 15, 2012 2:44:25 AM UTC-3, wrote:

For comparison's sake, I included a US quarter coin on one of the pics.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/88/cbmleds1.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/823/cbmleds2.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/26/cbmleds3.jpg/

Sorry, I think I pasted the wrong URLs, I think these direct ones are better

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/2938/cbmleds1.jpg
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/7578/cbmleds2.jpg
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/6706/cbmleds3.jpg

FC

On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:44:25 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

Sorry to contradict you, but I've just dissected my Commodore
Amiga 1200 and it had the same kind of large LEDs (evidently
Commodore engineers had a thing for large LEDs
(...)
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/26/cbmleds3.jpg/
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 manufactured as a single piece, (...)

Egads... y'er right. It's one custom assembly. I've never seen an
LED assembly quite like that.

Does your design need to be a rectangular LED? If you just want big
and can live with round, there are the T-3 1/4 LEDs, which are 10mm in
diameter. They usually come with various bases. The only ones I can
currently find with leads is a Radio Shack 276-086
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062563
5000mcd at 2.4v / 20ma. I'll dig for the source later.

I also tried to search Alibaba.com for LED diffusers that were close
to the Commodore example. 1500 items later and nothing close.

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?).

MOS Technologies? Nope. They just made micros and some glue chips.

I would have stuffed two T-1 3/4 LED's into a diffused and not gone
the custom LED route.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:54:22 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

But LEDs had a purpose: to give a visual clue about what is
going on with a certain system component. So if the software
had an unexpected pause but you saw a LED blinking on the
CD-Reader you said to yourself "ok, it' s reading data from
the CD". Or, coversely, when there was a pause in software
or you started a disk-intensive operation you could look
at a PC and say "oh, it' s doing disk I/O still".

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.

Nowadays, my PC is a mid-tower server tucked under the desk.
So while the MOBO still provides a "HDD activity" led, it' s
about 5 inches from the floor 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 FDDs or my Commodore Amiga....

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.

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 LEDs...

Yep. If you want to see what a computer product is deficient, just
look at the utilities provided by third party developers.

How to move your HDD leds to some more visible position using keyboard LEDs
http://www.instantfundas.com/2008/10...into-more.html

I downloaded FloatLED. Very nice except that there's no CD/DVD or USB
flash drive monitoring.

Windows HDD systray indicator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/activityindicat/

However, since I run several different OSs, I' d like my "solution"
to be hardware, not software based...

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.

I hope you get the idea by now...
FC

Yep. Incidentally, you might get better answers in
news:sci.electronics.design.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sunday, July 15, 2012 4:10:47 AM UTC-3, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
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.

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...

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.

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...

Yep. Incidentally, you might get better answers in
news:sci.electronics.design.

You have been of great help and made me think about my design. Thanks for that, Jeff!

FC

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:22:35 -0700 (PDT), wrote:


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...

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:
http://www.solepoxy.com/clearmoldingcompounds.asp
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.

http://www.led-professional.com

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS