[rescue] Dual head Octane SI + ESI

[Phil Stracchino]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2003 at 03:52:38PM +0200, Jochen Kunz wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 29, 2003 at 02:45:33PM +0200, Bjorn Ramqvist wrote:
> > Anyway, I'll probably order some of the white LEDs. Are you using 3mm or
> > 5mm? 3mm would be the most space efficient, but they're harder to solder
> > onto the bord.
> I have 5 mm LEDs. I used only one insted of the two bulbs. I had only two
> blue LEDs and two Octanes. If I had the chooice, I would try white 3 mm
> LEDs. There are other options like EL foil or EL bands or cold kathode 
> or ... It is amazing what these case modder kids use... 

The trouble with cold cathode is RF noise inside the case, and EL
wire/foil suffers an exponential loss of brightness over its usable
life.  LEDs are definitely the best solution for this application.


> > For some reason SGI decided to use a red LED for the fault light. Why on
> > EARTH didn't they use regular white/blue/green/whatever LEDs for the
> > normal light? *confused*
> Good, bright white and blue LEDs wheren't there when the Octane was born. 
> Green LEDs have no good contrast to the green skin and yellow/orange
> is ugly. (IMHO) 

Yup, good bright blue LEDs have only been available for about two years,
and white LEDs are even newer.  White LEDs actually use a phosphor
coating excited by the actual emissions of the LED to produce white
light, iirc.  It could in principle also be done by placing three
junctions (R/G/B) close together in a single package, along with
balancing resistors to tune the RGB color balance, but the phosphor is a
simpler solution; to my knowledge no-one's proposed doing the
three-junctions-in-one-package trick commercially.


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