C-1541, Revision 1

The first idea concerns the red light the original equipment used to signal data access on a floppy. It's a rectangular LED tucked into the lower left corner of the drive's dark brown faceplate. I bought a couple of extra SATA to USB cables and monkeyed with splicing into the receive wires... that was a mess. So then I hired a computer repair company to solder a red LED to where those receive cables meet the board. 

I'm hoping to have the improved cable back soon. If operable, I'll attempt to splice the original drive light into the new LED wires.

I'm thinking about relocating the blower to the bottom of the unit, where it has better access to fresh air. I also bought some PVC tubing to fashion a cowl to better direct the blower's output to the SSD. 

Also, with the fan seated on the bottom, this may allow me to discard the top of the "cage," which will make the enclosure lighter.

Another reason for relocating the fan is due to noise. That little blower is relatively loud. I'm buying some soundproofing material to apply to the inside of the case (excluding the air vents, obv).