Time for some more glory-days pc bling. This car stereo-looking accessory is quite sophisticated when compared to some other more simple drive bay accessories from back then.
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| A standard Hardcano 12 unit (wires not pictured) |
This is the Thermaltake Hardcano 12 temperature monitor and fan controller. Its key features are 4-channel fan control with accompanying case temperature readouts, computerized automatic speed control, F and C toggle-able readings, and an oh-so-trendy electroluminescent backlighting for the information panel.
Electroluminescent was everywhere during this time, especially popular with custom car gauges and similar accessories. This dull teal lighting is impossible to ignore when you are familiar with its' looks and car-tweak significance around two decades ago.
This unit includes some accommodations for a hard drive inside, which can be inferred by the abundance of different screw holes on the sides of the outer casing. My particular unit didn't come with any of the necessary brackets or hardware to facilitate this, however.
The front of the unit has two clusters of buttons and a large LCD screen with some curve indicators printed on. This pattern might be a holdover, perhaps originally there was supposed to be a graphic indication on fan RPM but the final product's display doesn't really utilize this. When powered on, the electroluminescent panel will light up and the default readouts will appear. Fan speed operation defaults to 'auto' and temperature is in Celsius. Pretty standard for other fan controllers at the time is fan RPM detection which will alert the user if a fan has stopped. The Hardcano 11 includes this feature as well.
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| Online storefront image. This diagram lists the buttons and their respective functions. |
When I first received the item, it was an as-is deal without any real packaging, hardware, or instructions to speak of. Online, I can only find instructions for the more compact Hardcano 12 SE (special edition), which, as far as I can tell, is functionally identical aside from backlit buttons (and other small design changes to the front panel). Did a quick power-on test using a spare jumped power supply and some random fans. I immediately noticed that the front panel backlighting wouldn't work, and certain fans would not power on when connected to the fan controller.
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| Notice that the fan connector wires come sleeved from the factory for that cool, custom look (sadly this color isn't UV-reactive). |
Cracking open the case revealed the very simple issues. Opening was equally as simple because it arrived with only 1 screw holding it together. The issues were just some headers that had come unplugged, either during shipping or while the previous owner had it in his possession. Simply plugging them in made everything work again.
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| Each connector has internal labels as well as labels further down the cables for your convenience. |
The backlight on the unit was a bit dim, probably from age and use over time. Another quirk of electroluminescent lighting which I am all too familiar with, was transformer whine. Electroluminescent lighting operating off of 12v uses a transformer to convert the voltage to whatever is usable by the lighting, and depending on various factors, may make a loud and constant whining noise. This is something I remember exactly from my APC electroluminescent car accessories.
As for flaws of the system, for whatever reason Thermaltake decided that this round of thermal probes should have extremely thinly-gauged wires right at the end just before the probes. I guess for better flexibility? Whatever the reason is, it made dealing with this unit a pain. The wires liked to curl up and would get caught on absolutely everything, and because the wires were so thin, the unit arrived with one of the probes already broken. The single broken wire soon turned to two, so I opted to remove the affected probe. Funnily enough, the case temp probes of the Hardcano 11 lacked these ultra-thin wires.
This has the unfortunate side effect of causing the temperature alarm to constantly be enabled as soon as the unit is powered on. Another interesting side-effect is that the front panel completely freezes up when a probe is unplugged, perhaps due to a programming oversight. So as a result, you get a constantly chirping alarm and no way to disable it besides tearing the entire unit out of your pc.
I've removed the unit until I can find a replacement temperature probe, but while it was there in my PC it looked quite sharp, at least.
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| Beauty shot of the Hardcano 12 on top of its' predecessor. |
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