What is the true meaning of the HD light?

[Bazango]

If the system shows no activity on the screen but the HD light is on, does that mean that the system is NOT hung? When I say "on" I mean "not flickering" and there are no noises coming from the HD.

[a Bill]

*

[This message has been edited by a Bill (edited 06-16-99).]

[Bazango]

Oh yeah? Well, you asked for it.

One day a set theorist walks into a burger joint and says "I'll have a super duper triple whammy bacon double cheese-o-rama cheese burger." The guy at the counter says "Look, we don't have a 'super double cheese ... whatever burger' all we got are Big Macs." "In that case," says the set theorist, "I'll have one of those too."

I'll rephrase the question. What does the HD light indicate?

[MadMax]

That you have a working led...

That indicator senses voltage on the ide bus. DMA handshakes, interrupt handshakes, communication checks, i/o verification....
all of these activities (generated by the mobo and/or the OS) can make your busy light illuminate without actually transferring any data in or out of the hdd. Of course, you could have it hooked to the wrong port on the mobo and it could be indicating something other than ide bus activity....

My answer to your first question is "NO". The light could be off and your system might not be hung either. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[Bazango]

Not you too? That's a little better. Anyway the setting of the problem was my fresh installation of Win98. I pulled the CD-ROM and everything boots up OK.

Thanks, all.

[MadMax]

Duhhh...what? I don't understand....

What do you mean, "Not you too. Well, that's a little better."?

There's a joke here that I'm missing...

[Bazango]

The joke is in the way my question was answered by both of you. That's what I meant by "Not you too?" You both stated your evaluation of a lit HD light in logically obscure terms. This was probably motivated by the way I phrased the question which was to create a yes or no response, but was itself somewhat obscure. "...that's a little better" was in reference to your explanation of the HD light which was simple, concise and most plauseable.

Please note that no fast food personel were actually injured or malined in the writing of the posting "What is the true meaning of the HD light". Any resemblence to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.

[a Bill]

Bill is dense http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif



[This message has been edited by a Bill (edited 06-17-99).]

[MadMax]

Logically obscure? The logic path I took was to answer the question you wrote, not the one you meant. One must attempt be as precise as possible here, not concise. You don't go the doctor that gives you the shortest answer to a poorly phrased question do you? So the answers that were posted were FACTUALLY obscure to the uninitiated. There was no faulty, blurred or unclear logic employed in the answers, except maybe as a joke (Yours was funny, BTW http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif) but there may be some rather technical references in the mentioned answers that maybe someone would not understand.

Ok, now for the non-bull**** answer:
You phrased your question as a pretty obvious brain plexor (joke hidden inside). This indicated that you are, in fact a knowledgable computer geek, not given to making obvious hardware errors. Thus thinking, I threw out the MOST obvious answers to your plexor to play along and tried to throw some knowledge out onto the board for debate.

I appreciate this type of humor, but, alas, I fear that a Bill does not. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif

[This message has been edited by MadMax (edited 06-16-99).]

[joep]

I'm a novice and just learning my way around computers.I'd like to know the answer.What does that sometimes flickering,on steady,not on at all amber colored light indicate?

[Bazango]

joep: See MadMax's answer above. Basically it indicates elementary activity between the HD and the rest of the system. If you built your own computer it helps to remember that the light is plugged into the motherboard. Software helps to determine activity on the motherboard, but not always. A clue to the exceptions might be that you can read the BIOS without any SOFTware loaded into the chip. (Does the program in the BIOS qualify as software?)

a BILL: What happened to your reply? Something fishy is going on. "Bill is dense"? That doesn't sound original.

MadMax: Has this posting been messed with? Did a Bill put the asterisk in his first reply?

[MadMax]

I think a Bill just changed his mind. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[Bazango]

O-kee-doke.