[UnaClocker]

Editted for the RunCore drive, removed information about the defunct Generic SSD this article was originally about.

And a video, on YouTube.
How I figured this out.. The STEC SSD uses a controller that is BGA, meaning all of it's pins are underneath it. But the RunCore SSD has a controller with all of it's pins accessible. So that's what started my gears moving. I started with getting the tech sheet for the controller on the RunCore SSD. It is a JMicron JM20330. That got me the pinout of that controller. I knew that if you tapped a certain wire on a standard PATA ide cable, you could use that wire to drive an activity LED. I did some googling and determined that it was pin 39 out of 40. Some more googling and I found that the name for that wire is "DASP". Looking at the pinout for the controller on the RunCore SSD, it was pin # 42 on the controller. That pin is the 2nd pin in from one of the corners. I wasn't looking forward to soldering to that leg, that far in. Luckily, I noticed a trace leading directly away from that leg. I followed it to a resistor. I used a Meter to confirm that's where it lead, since there was some silkscreened writing on top of the trace obscuring it. Once I confirmed that it was going to that resistor, I simply soldered to that side of the resistor. MUCH easier to solder to. I tried my best to take a picture of which resistor you are soldering to, I think it's pretty clear from the picture. It's normally under a sticker that you'll have to peal back. Please do not do this if you don't think you are a soldering wizard. And be aware, this WILL void your warranty. Say goodbye to that warranty.


Next, I needed some power. Being an LED, 3.3v is plenty. So I googled up the pinout for the MiniPCI-e slots, and saw that 3.3v was available at pin52, among other places. So I ran a wire from the unpopulated MiniPCI-e slot's pin 52.

Next, I quickly put the machine back together to do a quick trial on my desk to see if my research had been correct and this really would get me an HDD light.


Bingo! It works. Just for the record, I used a 3mm LED, 1k resistor (far more than I needed, but very safe, and you have to go a lot farther overboard on resistance before the LED starts getting dimmer)
Now I went and downloaded the disassembly guide from Dell and took the machine all the way apart. I found that I could tuck the LED right up next to spot where the lights come out the front of the unit. Unfortunately, I didn't snap any pictures of the LED installed. I used some superglue to hold the LED in place. If you go to do this after me, this step should make itself pretty well obvious. I used heatshrink tubing to protect the bare leads at the LED.
So that's about all there is to it. The hard part really was the research. Check out the video I linked at the beginning to see the light in action.
And before anyone asks.. I know someone is bound to.. No, this will not even SLIGHTLY affect your battery life. The LED draws 20ma at most, and is on a very small portion of the time the machine itself is on.
And one other note.. I did not disable the low battery LED. It'll still blink orange when the battery gets below 10% like it always has. When the low battery light is flashing while the hard drive is accessing, you get a kind of pinkish color.
Final note, again, this article was edited from the original post regarding the now discontinued "Generic MLC SSD's".. I kept most of the wording the same and just changed the names and some of the facts. I liked the way I had written it last time.
If you don't want to void your warranty, there are some software solutions.

[UnaClocker]

You can use the 5v power source that people use for their internal USB mods.

[emdc]

I sure do with there was a way to add this without soldering.

I disassembled a USB LED light the other day & now have an LED with a resistor inline & 2 nice, long wires. I just can't bring myself to solder anything to my RunCore.

[khammo01]

You don't need to solder to your Runcore drive.

I just did this mod to my new Dell Mini. I have a 32GB STEC and didn't want to solder to the drive either.
I soldered the negative terminal to pin 52 of the SSD connector terminal and positive terminal to pin 52 of the WWAN terminal.
It worked fine.

Also - I used a blue 3mm LED that I took out of a USB fan. I didn't use a resistor. Also, I taped the LED to the system board rather than the bottom of the keyboard bezel. I positioned it so it shines toward the left into the clear battery warning indicator. The brightness is perfect.
I didn't use super-thin wires. I just used some old wires I found laying around - about the thickness of a each earbud of a set of Ipod earphones. I ranthe wires through one of the WWAN mounting holes.

it's cute when the indicator is flashing red and there is disk activity - it looks pink. :-)

[holmes4]

The RunCore does not provide this signal on pin 52.

[khammo01]

Ah. I didn't understand that the Runcore device doesn't output to this pin. I thought that if the modification was made to the Dell Mini instead of the actual drive then it would be persistent even if the drive was upgraded. Thanks for clarifying.

[xokeman]

I was wondering if anyone has added a REAL A/C power indicator light

I assume this would be fairly straight forward

[khammo01]

Originally Posted by holmes4

The RunCore does not provide this signal on pin 52.

As I mentioned earlier I soldered to pin 52 on the mainboard instead of anywhere on the actual drive. I just replaced my STEC32GB drive with a Runcore 64GB drive and my HDD LED is still working!

I don't know about the Runcore 32GB but it just worked with the 64GB one. No changes needed.

BTW the disk speed seems much faster. Previous boot time from power press until first auto-start program starts: about 1 minute 10 seconds.
Runcore 64GB boot time: about 40 seconds. Wow!

[anguish]

*sigh* I wish I had the soldering skills to do this mod. I so desparately want to do it.

[bsoplinger1]

The following was not written by me but by:

"Last edited by holmes4; Today at 06:53 PM. "

Pin 52 is a 3.3V supply, not a signal. Please read the first post in this thread.

[holmes4]

Read back through this thread. Pin 52 doesn't work for this on RunCore SSDs.