dbminter Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 I believe I may have asked this before at the old forum. Anyone who has the NEC 3500a ever noticed this? Whenever I press the Eject button to eject or load the disc tray, the hard drive light blinks, indicating disc access. What surprises me is this happens even in DOS, even at the system boot prompt which I have password protected in the BIOS. So, even though the computer is sitting there waiting to boot, the HD accesses when the drive eject button is pressed. Anyone else have this? And, why would this happen? The NEC is a Master on its own Primary channel, whereas the HD is an SATA drive.
LIGHTNING UK! Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 Since when has the hdd light mean it was JUST hdd activity? It's anything on the bus. Ejecting a disc does change the state of a drive and this is told to / realised by the OS. I would guess it's those notifications that cause the light to come on. You notice it more because I expect the light stays on until the drive is 'ready' again to accept commands. Normally it would flash so quickly you couldn't see it - i.e. in the style of windows autoinsert / run, that flashes the light every second for a fraction of a second - or at least it does on my pc
dbminter Posted March 29, 2006 Author Posted March 29, 2006 Ah, that's something I didn't factor in! Remember, I'm from the old school where the HD light only returned information when the HD was accessed. My first PC, a 286, had the light data cable connected directly on the board next to the ATA plug for the HD. The NEC is the first and thus far only drive I have come across where pressing the Eject button activated the HD light normally. (I had one hacked DVD drive firmware to turn off the locked read speeds, but, quickly reverted to the real deal because whenever a movie DVD was inserted, the drive accessed the HD. Slowed EVERYTHING down, even in a DOS prompt.) The JLMS 166s LiteOn DVD-ROM with DVD-RAM read only support doesn't do this. Of all attached drives, only the NEC does this. My HD is on an SATA, the LiteOn is a Master on the Primary; the NEC is a Master on the Secondary. The two connected external USB drives have their own lights, and, being USB, shouldn't access the bus, right, that the ATA's are on. Actually, the light may have always come on, but, was so quick, as noted, it wouldn't be noticed.
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