Author Topic: How to Start My MAME cab with one button (Read 13574 times)

jimbomame10 · « **on:** February 11, 2010, 11:08:26 pm »

HELP! I have a problem. I read this post:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=77598.0

and want to start my mame cab with one pushbutton. The problem I have is that when i took off the face plate covering my power button on my mame dell pc, I found out that the power button is not connected to the motherboard via a few colored wires. Instead, I have this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/DELL-OPTIPLEX-GX280,POWER-BUTTON-PCB,-U1456_W0QQitemZ230433441317QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxq20100208?IMSfp=TL100208175002r10905

The power button is the little red button which must be depressed to turn on the pc. The little red button is on a small power button pcb with attaches via a small IDE cable. What the hell am I supposed to do? How the hell am I supposed to connect it to a pushbutton? Anyone have any ideas?

Malenko · « **Reply #1 on:** February 11, 2010, 11:28:59 pm »

solder to the back side of the PCB where the legs are connected to the board.

Space Fractal · « **Reply #2 on:** February 12, 2010, 01:38:07 am »

you can with no problems use a regular arcade buttons to power up your cab. all the power on button really does is to connect 2 pin on the motherboard...... Just like a button.

gryhnd · « **Reply #3 on:** February 12, 2010, 07:33:54 am »

Jim,

I can help you out. I had the same problem because my cocktail is powered with a dell gx260.

(Space Fractal: in Dells like this, there is no direct MB connection like a regular PC)

I'll have to get you the exact wires to cut and splice into later as I can't look right now, but here's what I did.

Pull that mini-board off. You don't need it
Find yourself a longer ribbon cable. I can't remember at the moment if I used an old IDE or not (was that two rows or one row of pins?), but whatever it was, it required I just cut the the connector down to size (width = same # of pins) with a razor so that it plugged in OK.
On the other end of the cable, remove the connector altogether
Peel out the two correct wires (which I'll ID later) and hook those up to your power button, and problem solved.

In my "case" I used a spare CP button, which you can see in the left fore-ground below:

PS - my Dell is decased

jimbomame10 · « **Reply #4 on:** February 12, 2010, 09:25:09 am »

Cool. the ide ribbon I have that is connected now is actually long enough for where i'll be placing the pushbutton so I don't even need a new one. All I need to know is which wire on the ribbon connects to pushbutton common contact and which connects to the pushbutton NO contact. And any photos or pics to illustrate would be awesome bec. I am actually kind of a noob but I am trying to learn as I go.

gryhnd · « **Reply #5 on:** February 12, 2010, 01:53:22 pm »

Quote from: jimbomame10 on February 12, 2010, 09:25:09 am

Cool. the ide ribbon I have that is connected now is actually long enough for where i'll be placing the pushbutton so I don't even need a new one. All I need to know is which wire on the ribbon connects to pushbutton common contact and which connects to the pushbutton NO contact. And any photos or pics to illustrate would be awesome bec. I am actually kind of a noob but I am trying to learn as I go.

First, understand that this is what worked for MY Dell. I cannot say if it's the same for yours or not. So anything you do from this point forward is your own responsibility. M-kay?

Turn off your PC and unplug it.

See the attached pics. With the original miniboard that has the power button on it removed, cut off the connector from the ribbon cable (not the end that connects to the OTHER miniboard...see my other pic). This assumes you could care less about the drive LED indicator, power LED indicator, and if I recall correctly, some hook ins for headphones and maybe an upfront USB.

The second wires in from both sides of the cable are what you want. Tease those out and carefully strip back some of the insulation. Now do a test to see if you have the right ones. With those two wires not touch anything, plug your PC back in. After a moment, briefly connect the two wires together. Your PC should turn on. If so, you are all set. Just hook those up to your button however you see fit (it doesn't matter which goes to ground and which to NO).

If not, then you'll have to play the same game I did, and go one by one through the wires in the cable until you find the correct pair that does the job.

gryhnd · « **Reply #6 on:** February 12, 2010, 01:59:49 pm »

Just to orient yourself, IMG_7259 shows the ribbon cable coming from the second small board, leading to the push button...as you see in my original post earlier.

meany · « **Reply #7 on:** February 12, 2010, 04:06:13 pm »

Here is what i did, It's kinda hackish. The front of the PC is facing the back of the cabinet. I drilled a hole the size of a pencil in the back of the cabinet so that it is directly across from the power buttom on the PC. I stick the eraser side of the pencil through the hole and it presses the power button on the PC. I like this approach because kids or any other person won't be able to turn it on unless you show them how.

sham69 · « **Reply #8 on:** February 22, 2010, 06:28:38 am »

hi folks,
I am having difficulty wiring up a button to power my pc on aswell.
Its a compaq evo.
Do I need to wire a ground aswell like wiring a button to the ipac?
I am also not sure about where to solder , I have a button at the front of the pc which I have recently decased (bad idea)
Underneath the motherbord there are what looks like 4 solder points although 2 of them might be legs.
Any help appreciated as wiring is not my forte.
Cheers.
Sham.

Kman-Sweden · « **Reply #9 on:** February 22, 2010, 08:02:10 am »

You could find out where to solder with a short pice of wire. Try shorting two "pins/legs" and when the PC starts up you've found where to solder.

sham69 · « **Reply #10 on:** February 22, 2010, 09:23:12 am »

have been messing around with it but can't figure it out.
Do I need a wire from the NO and the COM from the arcade button or just 1 wire?
Sorry not great at wiring.
Also not sure where the pins are as there seem to be for on the button , 2 of which I guess are legs.
Sorry hopeless at this sort of stuff but did manage to get all my lighting working fairly handy

Cheers for the reply.

Malenko · « **Reply #11 on:** February 22, 2010, 09:34:41 am »

Quote from: sham69 on February 22, 2010, 09:23:12 am

have been messing around with it but can't figure it out.
Do I need a wire from the NO and the COM from the arcade button or just 1 wire?
Sorry not great at wiring.
Also not sure where the pins are as there seem to be for on the button , 2 of which I guess are legs.
Sorry hopeless at this sort of stuff but did manage to get all my lighting working fairly handy
Cheers for the reply.

take 1 piece of wire and bridge 2 connections, keep trying different combos of 2 until you find the 2 that turn the PC on. Then run 1 wire from 1 leg to the COM on a cheery switch, and 1 wire to the NO on a cherry switch. Doesnt matter which of the 2 wires goes to which part of the cherry since the button is not being daisy chained.

sham69 · « **Reply #12 on:** February 22, 2010, 09:41:53 am »

Thanks thats exactly what I need to know.
Thats what I started doing but then complicated it as it wasnt working for me.
I will try it now.
Cheers.

sham69 · « **Reply #13 on:** February 22, 2010, 11:25:16 am »

working perfectly now.
Thanks a million for the replies.
I am moving house so trying to make the cab a bit more sturdy and tidy up the wiring.

Alpha17X · « **Reply #14 on:** February 22, 2010, 08:44:36 pm »

One astonishingly easy method of starting up your computer with a joystick button. Assuming your bios allows it, go in and set it to turn on on keypress. Have it be 'any key' save and exit, now assuming your joystick runs off of a keyboard encoder, you should litterally be able to push any button, or even just move the joystick and have your computer/cabinet turn on. That is of course, assuming your joystick is running off of a keyboard encoder and your bios allows the system to turn on from a key press.

ubiquityman · « **Reply #15 on:** February 22, 2010, 09:00:49 pm »

Another option if you are using a keyboard encoder is to program one of the buttons as "power".
It's not as robust as hard-wiring to the computer, but during normal operation, it's sufficient to put the computer in and out of standby.

DeLuSioNal29 · « **Reply #16 on:** February 24, 2010, 04:57:41 pm »

Also, there are some BIOSes that support a power feature that will start the computer automatically when it has a power loss. So if you turn it off with a power strip, it will automatically turn back on when you apply power to the computer again.

Then you would want to configure Windows so that when you shut down, it will get to a screen that says, "It is now safe to turn off your computer" so that Windows shuts down safely before you cut off the power. You can do the opposite of this article to get it to stay at the screen that says, "It is now safe to turn off your computer".

All software driven.

D

umdsfinest · « **Reply #17 on:** February 28, 2010, 11:06:14 pm »

Sham, do you have any pics from your work? I also have a Compaq Evo and am wondering how to do what you did. Thanks!

drventure · « **Reply #18 on:** February 28, 2010, 11:21:22 pm »

Another option to throw out there. In my bios anyway, there's an option to "power on with PS2" which, when it's ON, causes ANY activity on the PS2 ports (kbd or mouse) to power up the PC.

To shut down, just map an entry in MaLa to run a BAT file to shut the system down (or put a call to a shutdown utility in a bat file used to start Mala, so that when It ends, it'll automatically shut the cab down.

You'd still want a Smart strip in this case though.

raungst · « **Reply #19 on:** April 05, 2010, 10:26:34 pm »

Quote from: DeLuSioNal29 on February 24, 2010, 04:57:41 pm

Also, there are some BIOSes that support a power feature that will start the computer automatically when it has a power loss. So if you turn it off with a power strip, it will automatically turn back on when you apply power to the computer again.

Then you would want to configure Windows so that when you shut down, it will get to a screen that says, "It is now safe to turn off your computer" so that Windows shuts down safely before you cut off the power. You can do the opposite of this article to get it to stay at the screen that says, "It is now safe to turn off your computer".

All software driven.

D

I'm having a similar issue with my Dell computer. I'm a little nervous messing with the power cable when I don't know what each wire does. I'd like to get the "It is now safe to turn off your computer" route working, but I have an ACPI computer, and I can't figure out how to prevent it from turning itself off after Windows has shut down. Has anyone got this to work?

My BIOS has AC recovery, so if I can get this working I'm golden. Is there any other way to simulate a power failure without actually just turning the power off?

shrunkenmaster · « **Reply #20 on:** April 06, 2010, 02:52:40 am »

Also on this topic, grab yourself an Eon Powerdown from Ebay for a couple of quid, so when you turn on/off the computer, everything else turns on/off too. Cheaper than most smartstrips and does the same job.

raungst · « **Reply #21 on:** April 06, 2010, 10:20:21 am »

I'm actually looking at this as a way to switch my entire cab on: http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-BG108000-04-Conserve-Energy-Saving/dp/B001GQ2W6W/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1270563343&sr=8-7. I'd love to use a smart strip, but that would mean I'd have to be able to access the computer power button. Silly Dell.

I still have the problem that I can't use the feature that turns the computer back on after a power loss, if I can't somehow cause the power loss in the first place. Would setting the computer to standby and then cutting power be safe enough? I'm assuming that the BIOS would still think that its a power loss without completely screwing up Windows.

raungst · « **Reply #22 on:** April 06, 2010, 07:42:33 pm »

Apparently patience is everything. If you wait like 10 seconds, the power in the motherboard dissipates and when you plug it back in, the computer turns on. Doh!

sham69 · « **Reply #23 on:** April 07, 2010, 05:52:22 am »

Hi Raungst,
Sorry I only spotted your post now.
Did you get sorted on the power button or do you need a pic of my setup?
I moved house and the wires came off, I need some hot glue I think...
Let me know if you got sorted and apologies for the delay with the reply.
Sham.

Diewrecked · « **Reply #24 on:** April 07, 2010, 10:39:02 am »

Quote from: shrunkenmaster on April 06, 2010, 02:52:40 am

Also on this topic, grab yourself an Eon Powerdown from Ebay for a couple of quid, so when you turn on/off the computer, everything else turns on/off too. Cheaper than most smartstrips and does the same job.

This is a wicked idea!! Many thanks for this piece of advice.

Nice one.

raungst · « **Reply #25 on:** April 07, 2010, 10:46:39 am »

Quote from: sham69 on April 07, 2010, 05:52:22 am

Hi Raungst,
Sorry I only spotted your post now.
Did you get sorted on the power button or do you need a pic of my setup?
I moved house and the wires came off, I need some hot glue I think...
Let me know if you got sorted and apologies for the delay with the reply.
Sham.

Yeah. I have a plan now. I got the power strip with the switch so I don't have to mess with the Dell PCB / power button. AC Recovery works great. After the computer shuts down normally, you can turn off the power with the switch, and when you turn the switch back on, the computer comes back on. The only caveat is that you have to wait like 10 sec right after you remove power to turn it back on (if you wanted it to). This is what tripped me up when I was testing it out.

bkenobi · « **Reply #26 on:** April 07, 2010, 10:46:56 am »

Ebay doesn't have any "EON PowerDown", but it does have a few "E-ON PowerDown".

In case anyone is interested and doesn't know, these are only for UK standard receptacles.

Veeb0rg · « **Reply #27 on:** April 08, 2010, 01:26:17 am »

I grabbed a smart strip off ebay for 14$.

as for my power button, I'm grabbed a test panel and put it behind the coin door, all I gotta do is open the coin door and press the button.

jvita08 · « **Reply #28 on:** February 21, 2013, 04:34:37 pm »

I have a Dell gx260 just like the few of you above. but when i join the two wires to power up the motherboard it starts for a second and then shuts off? any idea guys?

leapinlew · « **Reply #29 on:** February 21, 2013, 08:07:20 pm »

Solder a doorbell to an arcade button so that when you press the arcade button it goes "ding-dong". Then have Reginald, or whatever his/her name is turn on the cab. You do have a butler, right?

DaOld Man · « **Reply #30 on:** February 21, 2013, 08:36:13 pm »

Quote from: jvita08 on February 21, 2013, 04:34:37 pm

I have a Dell gx260 just like the few of you above. but when i join the two wires to power up the motherboard it starts for a second and then shuts off? any idea guys?

Are you holding the wires together? They need to momentarily connect. Touch the wires together but dont connect them.

DaOld Man · « **Reply #31 on:** February 21, 2013, 08:37:27 pm »

Quote from: leapinlew on February 21, 2013, 08:07:20 pm

Solder a doorbell to an arcade button so that when you press the arcade button it goes "ding-dong". Then have Reginald, or whatever his/her name is turn on the cab. You do have a butler, right?

Good idea. "Oh Crones, be a good chap and turn on this blasted machine for me."

wp34 · « **Reply #32 on:** February 21, 2013, 08:43:45 pm »

Quote from: leapinlew on February 21, 2013, 08:07:20 pm

Solder a doorbell to an arcade button so that when you press the arcade button it goes "ding-dong". Then have Reginald, or whatever his/her name is turn on the cab. You do have a butler, right?

My butler's name is Alfred. But I have a button hidden underneath the head of a bust on my desk that powers on my cabinet.

ant2 · « **Reply #33 on:** February 24, 2013, 04:58:46 am »

I have a dell in my mame cabinet and I set the power options under the bios to power the machine on when power is restored.

I have my monitor/speakers/pc plugged in to a power strip, when I press the switch for the power strip, it then automatically turns the pc on, screen and speakers.

then within gameex I go in to "power off" which performs a shutdown

you can see on my video - youtube.com/aletchet

DeLuSioNal29 · « **Reply #34 on:** February 26, 2013, 05:52:04 am »

Quote from: DaOld Man on February 21, 2013, 08:36:13 pm

Are you holding the wires together? They need to momentarily connect. Touch the wires together but dont connect them.

+1
The computer is behaving as if you are holding down the power button. It will turn on for a few seconds and then it will shut off.

D


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