Help with Bubble Lights

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Hi. I have an Enermax Case with built-in Bubble lights on the front
bezel. As i was installing a new video card, I managed to dislodge the
bubble light adapter's wires from the connector to the bubble lights.
After many unsucceful attempts at trying to repair the adapter,I've
been searching desperately for this connector and i can't find it and
i was wondering if you guys could help.
; however, the bubble light wire itself is fine. The bubble light
cable is a 2 pin blue and white connector, and the adapter connects to
a 4 pin molex. I tried emailing enermax, but got no response. Thanks
Very Much

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On 23 Apr 2004 22:03:18 -0700, Jeffreyw5000@aol.com (JeffMaster Flex)
wrote:

>Hi. I have an Enermax Case with built-in Bubble lights on the front
>bezel. As i was installing a new video card, I managed to dislodge the
>bubble light adapter's wires from the connector to the bubble lights.
>After many unsucceful attempts at trying to repair the adapter,I've
>been searching desperately for this connector and i can't find it and
>i was wondering if you guys could help.
>; however, the bubble light wire itself is fine. The bubble light
>cable is a 2 pin blue and white connector, and the adapter connects to
>a 4 pin molex. I tried emailing enermax, but got no response. Thanks
>Very Much

I don't know what an Enermax's bubble light connector looks like, exactly,
but I've seen other bubble light adapters on (forget the case names at the
moment). They were basically just like a fan adapter except that the
power lead is 5V and there were only two pins.

If that sounds right, what you could do is buy the fan adapter and swap
the wires around. The metal inserts in the adapter's 4-pin molex
connector will slip out if you use a tiny object (like a jeweler's
screwdriver or big needle) to depress the tabs on both sides of the metal
contact. After pulling the tabs out use the screwdriver/needle to bend
the tabs back out slightly, opposite the direction you bend them
previously. Then insert them in the molex with proper orientation so that
the two pins going to the bubble light correspond to the power supply's 5V
(red) and ground (black) wire positions on the power supply 4-pin
connector.

The fan adapters are available everywhere but possibly cheapest here:
http://www.svcompucycle.com/

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

thanks alot!! One question:

How do I tell which wire is for ground and for 5V?

Thanks Again

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On 25 Apr 2004 17:47:04 -0700, Jeffreyw5000@aol.com (JeffMaster Flex)
wrote:

>thanks alot!! One question:
>
>How do I tell which wire is for ground and for 5V?
>
>Thanks Again

You should be able to compare it to the "broken" original adapter, which
of it's leads connected to the 5V (red) and Gnd (black) on the power
supply's connector.

An alternate method would be not inserting the male ends of the fan
adapter back into the plastic plug yet, so they're loose. Then you can
try connecting them one way (one to 5V and other to ground) and if that
doesn't cause LEDs to light, swap them so the "other" is to 5V and the
"one" to ground. It will not damage an LED to reverse the polarity, it
just won't light.

Keep in mind that I'm only ASSUMING your LED bubble-thing is set up to use
5V. Somewhere inbetween the wire and the LED(s) there should be a
resistor, and that resistor's value would determine if it's set up to use
5V or 12V. The case I had with the bubble-thing did use 5V and so I
suggest 5V first. Also if it needed 12V but you'd tried 5V, no damage
done, but if it needed 5V but you tried 12V, the LEDs would be overvolted
and burn out rather quickly, possibly within a few seconds. So, trying 5V
first is the safe way to do it. If you tried 5V and the result was that
the LEDs glowed quite dimly, not nearly as bright as previously, that
would tend to suggest they do in fact use 12V instead of 5V.

Just remember to swap the other, female end of the adapter too, to
correspond to the wires you swapped on the male end, so you have the
correct voltage on both. Otherwise it could cause damage if something
else were daisey-chained off of it.