[Macpartners] Re: Macpartners Digest, Vol 17, Issue 4

[John C. Welch]

On 10/8/04 12:28 PM, "Kerem B Limon" <k_limon at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> In the interest of accuracy, I'll note that this is not what I am talking
> about.
> And I am not trying to state a flame war, but perhaps offer some feedback.
> 
> High-end PC motherboards also have diagnostics LEDs on-board, too, and PC
> motherboards have practically *always* had diagnostic POST error codes and
> beeps courtesy of the various IBM-compatible BIOSs since I can remember. This
> may be a useful tool for the tinkerer or those of us who open up our machines.
> It's good to see that Apple has adopted this trend. This, however, does not
> help the average user or the tech who's trying to help them over the phone.
> 

And unless you spent the money on third party hard cards, most of them
amounted to "bad stuff, you're screwed". The ironic thing is that Apple had
better post codes than most, but getting them translated took an act of
God/Steve, or you had to know someone.

> What I am talking about, however, is a hard drive access light or LED. Every
> PC
> since the first IBM compatibles have had this; this is an invaluable tool for
> telling--without opening up anything--whether your computer is accessing the
> hard drive or not. While old tools under OS 9 like Norton Disk Light may try
> to
> implement this in software, there is nothing like a hard-wired indicator like
> this without regard to what OS is running on the machine. I've even soldered
> LEDs to the hard drive pins (OK, I made a connector, fine) and slotted an LED
> in some of my Apple cases for this very reason.

Again, on a machine with an active swap process, this is not going to be
that useful. In fact, I'll say it's pretty much a feel-good light. If your
boot drive isn't able to be accessed, there's a really handy
indication...you can't boot.

If it's a dead partition on the same drive, but you can get to your boot
drive, the LED says "Stuff is happening", but since you can use your boot
drive, you kind of expect that, since you're using the drive.

If it's a dead secondary drive, that's simple too, it won't mount. The light
is ONLY telling you that *something* is happening. Not if it's good or bad.
However, a bit of observation will tell you that. If the drive head motor
has completely died, the light will be useless since a) you won't be able to
access the drive *anyway* and the light will only tell you that nothing is
happening, since they don't tell you that the spindle motor is okay, but the
head motor is dead and gone.

In Janet's case...she can tell the drive is running, since she booted off of
it. What is the light going to do in this case...."Yes, just in case you
didn't trust the booting bit, your hard drive arm is swinging back and forth
like Britney Spears' hindquarters".

When hard drives weren't a requirement for function, the light made sense.
It makes sense in a headless situation, since you may want to just visually
check without logging into the machine remotely.
But when you're booting off the drive, it's redundant and silly. If you have
your CPU unit out of immediate visual range, it's not immediately useful
anyway.

> 
> Have you ever put your hand on a floppy drive or laptop to 'feel' if the hard
> drive was spinning? Since Apple makes an effort to design ultra-quiet hardware
> (not a bad thing in and of itself), lack of audio feedback on top of other
> indicators makes it even harder to tell what's going on inside the machine if
> your display/screen is on the fritz!

If your display or screen is on the fritz, you're probably not doing much
with the machine at that point.

john


-- 
Yeah, I know Sid Vicious wore a lock on a chain around his neck just like
that. But the first time you try and pogo with that thing on it¹s gonna chip
a tooth, Road Warrior.