Melty 3

I got the LEDs from Jameco a couple days ago and was finally able to start working on swapping the LEDs of the PCI fan card. I noticed that the LED legs were long.... A lot longer than the regular LED legs and that I wasn't going to be able to do an easy swap.

It wasn't too hard to remove the LEDs, since they were just pushed into the holes, so I just pushed them out with a small screwdriver; de-soldering them, however, was a bit tough with the lack of clearance (I ended up burning a bit of both cover stickers).

I pondered a bit of how I was going to use the new LEDs, then measured the gauge on the stock LED leg, which was 24 AWG. Immediately, I thought of the extra cat5e wire that I stripped from a bad cable or something and went to grab the braid I made out of it. I unbraided, untwisted, straightened, and played with the wire to find a good length before cutting up the strand I was working with (white-orange).

When I was straightening the next strand (white-green), I was getting annoyed with straightening the wire and the outer clear plastic insulator crinkling as I was straightening the wire, so I decided to dig out the coil of cat5e that I turned into an audio cable (I made it when I couldn't use Ziggy for a jukebox and was still using Lie-chan as the workhorse computer) and measured a good length to allow me to get at least the right amount from one strand (I ended up with enough extra to make 3 more if I really needed it). I cut all the pieces I needed and then went to sleep, since it was about midnight and I didn't entirely feel like trying to continue working on it.

I began after breakfast, seeing how much of the LED leg to leave, stripping both ends of each wire piece, and preparing all the wire pieces and legs with solder. It was a bit tough to solder the wires to the legs, but probably not as time consuming as installing the LED and legs before soldering them to the fan PCB, testing to make sure the LED works, and bending the wire to be a bit more compact.

Intake side of the fan, where the holes for the LEDs are; exhaust side of the fan, where the LED wires connect to the PCB.

I obviously removed the stickers on the exhaust side, since I burnt both a bit - neither wanted to stay flipped up and out of the way - and replaced it with tape to cover the lock washer access hole (there wasn't anything else covering it besides the Vantec sticker). You can also see the orange "stripes" of the white-orange wire I used.

Obviously, I put it back into Melty, reconnected the power, closed the case, and then turned her on.... I was quite surprised.

View from the case window (I apologise for the reflection and glare).

Not only is the LED colour a cherry red, but the blue colour of the plastic is nullified into a dark grey upon closer inspection. The red LEDs are brighter than the stock blue ones (I think), but nothing to really complain about. Needless to say, I'm very happy with the results, now that there's not mixed colouring inside the case.

I also forgot to mention that I modded the LED of the card reader from blue to red as well, but that was a few days before I got the LEDs from Jameco. The LED I used is bright enough (obviously) but not ridiculously bright like the old blue one (I had to put electrical tape over the light because it was too bright at night). I was surprised that the stock blue LED had a glass casing instead of plastic (might have been why it was quite bright? XD). The way that it was set up made it a bit difficult to bend the legs like the stock LED, but I got it bent enough to solder it to the PCB.