Have you ever wondered what to do with an old floppy drive?

Step 1: Dissasembly

First find an old floppy drive and remove any screws in site but leave the PCB with its 4 pole power connector.

Step 2: LEDness

Solder whatever colour 3mm (or 5mm) LEDs to a piece of strip-board, Ten just fit in great.

Step 3: Colouriness

Spray the plastic front, and the little pushy button, with your favourite colour.

Step 4: Switchiness

Make a switch arrangement to work with the little pushy button.

Step 5: Diffuserness

I used a white cable tie as a diffuser and a black one as a light block, both held with glue gun. Another LED is glued in place for floppy active LED.

Step 6: Microness

Using your micro of choice spend far too much time writing code to generate pretty patterns with the LEDs. For an easy option you could use colour changing LEDs without using a micro. I used an ST7FLITE39 which runs though 32 sequences an can be turned on and off by the pushy button. The floppy power LED does its own thing too. 5v power is taken from the floppy four pin connector but make sure you cut the PCB tracks to the rest of the board.

DON’T LET THE FLOPPY DIE!