Introduction

If you looked carefully at your PC, you'll noticed that there's quite a lot of peripherals in there that has some kind of LED (Light Emitting Diode), like the aging floppy, your CD or DVD ROM drives, your case, your hubs/switches and your network card. With the popularity and affordability of broadband Internet connection, most PC users today has a network card for their broadband connection. Even if you don't have broadband, you'll still probably have a network card for your home network. And these LEDs are just screaming to be modified! Most NICs have built-in LEDs to tell you if you're on a full-duplex mode, or if you're connected at 10mbps or 100mbps. Some even have blinking ones to tell you when you're transmitting or receiving data over the Net or network. The problem here is that these LEDs are situated at the back of your PC and I don't think anyone would want to go back there just to see your network activity or status right? That's where this mod comes in! I'll be showing you how you can mod those LEDs and move them to the front of your case!

The list of stuff....

Now this mod requires some soldering and if you're not familiar with the use of the soldering/de-soldering iron, get someone who does to help you. We would not be responsible if you screwed up and fry your NIC. Heheh! OK, let's see what we will need for this mod...

Before we go further, you might want to check you NIC first for the type of LEDs it's using. There are generally two types of LEDs that are being used right now. The normal Standard T1 LEDs (Bulb type) or the SMD LEDs (Surface Mount Device) ones. The pictures below shows you the difference. The first two pics shows you the T1 LEDs (bulb type) from a Linksys and a D-Link NIC. These LEDs are much easier to work with as they are usually soldered from the underside of the NIC PCB. You simply use a de-soldering tool to melt the solder at the joints and pull out the LEDs. Once pulled out, you'll see two holes left behind from the terminals of the LEDs and you simply solder on your new LEDs on. 3mm LEDs are normallly found for this kind of LEDs connection on a NIC.

 

Now these two NICs uses SMD LEDs which are mounted on the frontside of the NIC. There are no traces at the underside of the PCB so if you're not familiar with eletronics, like me!, you'll probably won't know how the hell are you gonna connect your new LEDs. I have found that these LEDs are more difficult to remove than the T1 types. I've also tried to just solder a wire to the terminals of the LEDs but the connections are not that strong. So I'll skip on doing this until I can do it a better way.... :O)

 

Using my al-cheapo :oP DMM (Digital Multimeter), I've found out that the voltage supplied to these LEDs ranges from 3.0V to 3.5V. This value might differ for different users but it should be in the same range... I've tried this mod on a few NICs and there is no need for any resistors at all. For this mod, I'll be working on the Compex RE100TX/WOL PCI NIC, which uses 3 Standard T1 LEDs. The number might differ from your own NIC, but usually, they all provide at least two of these infos, either;

This particular one has 3, so it'll be perfect for my Project Tivoli which I covered here. You can determine yours by looking at the bracket of the NIC or the instruction manual (if any) of your NIC.

 

Once you've determine your NIC LEDs identity and what it represents, it's time to strip them out! But first, a quick check on the parts needed. While others would prefer to directly solder the wires to the LED holes, I use jumper pins to connect them. The jumper pins are similar to those jumpers on your motherboard and they are usually sold in long strips. You can cut them up to the required number of pins easily. The pictures below gives you a better understanding of these jumpers.

 

I'll be connecting the LEDs using the two-pin connectors like the ones for your case LEDs. You can buy them or you can strip them off from an old case or something. You can fix the connectors to both ends of the wires or you can solder the LEDs to one end. I prefer the former as it allows me to easily change the LEDs in case it's faulty or in case I got mixed up in the polarity of the jumper. :O) Wire length depends very much on your case size and where you want to connect the LEDs up front. I use 3mm LEDs for this mod but you can use 5mm LEDs too. It all depends on personal preferences. I prefer to match the size of the PWR and HDD LEDs on my case, which is 3mm.

  

Now that you've got all your equipments/parts ready, it's time to roll!