The dummy hard drive will be visible through the brain, but not clear enough to see anything rotating. So it will have 16 tiny LEDs embedded on the platter which will 'rotate/animate' in sequence - driven by a microcontroller.
The room available for adding LED illumination is very tight. A total of 22 blue LEDs have been added (16 on the platter itself - in 8 sequenced pairs; plus 4 under the platter to illuminate the dark void; and a further 2 on the extremity of the arm).
Drilling the platter is interesting. It is basically aluminium, so it is easy to cut. As long as you layout the holes correctly!
The arm itself still moves to-and-fro using the original electromagnetic system. The two LEDs on the arm should enable this movement to be visible through the plastic brain. This might be subliminal - we will see.
The wiring of the LEDs on the platter is a bit like a forest!
In the end, the connections come to a 9-pin plug (poking through the cutout just above/left of the drive centre) and two 4-pin plugs (visible with numerous wires heading to them).
It is hard to remember what is what, so it is sensible to keep a record:
This whole undertaking took a long time to do; will it be worth it in the end?
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