Is the flashing light on the front of your pc for hd or cpu?

sladoid

sladoid

New Member
I think it is for the hd but I just want to be 100% sure. It has just been bugging me for a while.
Oh sorry if that wasn't specific enough. I mean the orange or red light under the power button that flashes sporadically when ever you do something. Not led's or any other lights.
 
Last edited:
I haven't seen too many cases with flashing cpu lights on the front of it! :P
Most cases will have a green and a red led while some only have the red led. The green led is to show that the power is on. The red led is the hard drive activity led that flcikers when the drive is busy loading some file or while browsing through different directories on the drive. You will see this led blinking while playing a game or running just about any program installed to the hard drive itself.
 
ok thanks. I always wondered what it was. But I just assumed it was the hd. Because if it was the cpu it wouldn't stop. But then maybe if was for "heavy" cpu usage. So I really didnt know.
 
Old computers with Turbo buttons sometimes had an LCD reading that showed the MHz the computers were running at. But it was just preset. It wasn't real-time or anything.
 
The_Other_One said:
Old computers with Turbo buttons sometimes had an LCD reading that showed the MHz the computers were running at. But it was just preset. It wasn't real-time or anything.
Click to expand...

Ha Ha I still have a old AT case with the turbo button, the board is long gone though! Cant really remember but I think it had a socket 5
 
Last edited:
In computers terms you guys are now talking "ancient history" there. :P Just imagine trying to see the cpu usage on a Commadore 64 or 8088. IBM had some of those models with the turbo button too. Besides bringing up the clock speed that could also disable the cpu cache forcing the cpu to wait for the slower memory to catch up. A good definition on that is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_button
 
StrangleHold said:
Ha Ha I still have a old AT case with the turbo button, the board is long gone though! Cant really remember but I think it had a socket 5
Click to expand...

Haha, man that's a newish one, or was... Most of the one's I've seen that had turbo buttons where 8088's to 486's. Not too many 586 system's had them. Though I do remember seeing a 166MHz display ;)
 
13 years ago I saw one row of three IBM models lined up with the old AT mid tower style case. A I286, I386, and I486 all saw the turbo button on those. Even the IBM I386 I ran for awhile had it on the flat top case with the two 5 1/4" floppy drives and 200mb hard drive there. I just left the turbo on all the time with that one. The AST I486 to follow didn't have that however.
 
The red colored led light is very much the standard used for many years to show the one or more ide drive(s) are active. On many old systems you only saw the green colored led for power.
 
hey if u wanna be sure, all you have to do is open your case and just trace the LED wire back to the main board. Using the MB manuel or it may even be printed on the MB "hd Led" . goodluck!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top