Wiring a button to the PC start up button

[Flip The Switch]

Hi guys, maybe a silly question, is there a tutorial on wiring a button on the cabinet to the computer on button on the PC?

it maybe a straight forward but id rather have some guidance than screwing it up (if its possible to screw it up?)

any help/links instructions would be sweet.

[bkenobi]

It really depends on your PC.  I use systems that I've built from scratch for both of my cabs.  As a result, I have wires that lead from the motherboard to the switch on the front of the computer that hook up to the power button.  All I did was to take that set of wires and split them to a second switch in parallel that was located on the front of the pc.  It shouldn't be that complicated if you have a DIY system, however if you have a manufacturer built system, you might be in for some effort.  I've seen a number of threads that discus this process for Dell desktop and laptops.  Those systems have ribbon cables that lead to the front of the case, so you need to know what wire is what in order to add a second switch.

What type of system are you working with?

[Flip The Switch]

Whoops sorry ment to add the system in the cabinet, its a very old pentium 4 its also a Dell, I believe its just got the start button on the PC going to the jumpers on the mobo, maybe i just need to daisy chain from the PC button to the button on the cabinet?

[BobA]

You need to put the button in parallel with the existing start button.  Putting it in series would require both buttons to be pressed at the same time.  In parallel either button can be pressed to start the PC.

[jholman76]

I used a "newer" (4 year old) dell optiplex. It has a pin header for the power button, but its not labeled so I had to use a multimeter and do a continuity check to figure out what pins the power was.  After that, I just cut the end off of another power connector I had, patched that to some wire, and connected that to the button.

here is an image of the connector hot glued to the pin out. There is a second one in there too... its going to  the power LED.

joe

[The Lumberjackass]

i too have a dell system in cab , its an xps 600 and it also has one of those boards connected by a ribbon.

do what i did and you wont have any problems. all you need is soldering iron and small pair of pliers.

(1) locate the original dell power button .
(2) now look at the back of it and you will see where the pins stick out . ( should be 4 of them )
(3) then take your pliers and start touching 2 pins at the same time to find the circuit ( pc will switch on )
(4) take a note of the pins which jumped started the pc and prepare a soldering iron.

now solder the ends of the new wires first and then continue to solder the wires to the pins.
this is easy to do provided you applied solder to the new wire first . and it doesnt matter what colour wire
connects to which pin ( positive or negative ) as all your trying to do is make a connection. happy gaming

[gryhnd]

Whoops sorry ment to add the system in the cabinet, its a very old pentium 4 its also a Dell, I believe its just got the start button on the PC going to the jumpers on the mobo, maybe i just need to daisy chain from the PC button to the button on the cabinet?

Also see http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=100211.msg1059143#msg1059143

[Dr Zero]

Here is a cool little button you could use just run the leads from the old button to this one and be good to go

http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/PB-143/HD-METAL-PUSHBUTTON-N.O.-MOMENTARY//1.html

[Flip The Switch]

Thanks for the replies guys, im def gona look into this a bit more on my days off, the computer in the cabinet is infact a COMPAQ (eww) and not a dell sorry.

[bkenobi]

Compaq, Dell, HP, Packard Bell, whatever.  They all do stupid proprietary stuff to their systems to force you to buy a new machine if anything dies (or send it in to them to fix).  Either way, you are probably going to have to do something similar to the previous posts in order to attach an external power button.  It's not really that big of a deal, just something you'll have to figure out.  Have fun!   

[mvsfan]

from my own personal experiences the basic thing i did not want when building my cabinet was 2 or 3 on switches.

this is how i did mine. i got a good power strip, wired an ac outlet to plug the power strip in to the 110 on / off switch on the side of my cabinet, that went to the existing cabinet power cord.

then, with any atx, or atx-2 style computer power supply, you only need to connect the green wire to any of the black wires also on the atx connector, to get rid of the soft off feature.

so, cut the green wire, stick it through a crimp on style TAP, and tap it into one of the many black wires.

you now have an always on power supply that you can just plug into the power strip, along with your monitor, speakers, etc. that is just one way to do it.

the second way that i have found and since upgraded my system to do, is to also still have computer control at shutdown, as well, where when you shut down the computer it also shuts off the monitor, speakers, marquee, and everything else in your cabinet. etc.

There are also two ways to do this too. one is to get an intelligent power strip. An intelligent power strip monitors the on or off state of the device that is plugged into its control outlet and thus also shuts off or turns on everything else connected to the power strip depending on the on/off state of the control device. This is the easiest, and also the most expensive way to achieve a total cabinet shutdown that is computer controlled.

the way i did it and for me the cheaper and more fun way is to hook up a reguar power strip to the cabinet power cord with a relay socket in between. then, all you need to do is plug in a 120v relay that has a 12v coil in the socket.

the 120 side is just a simple in/out, on/off setup. you want it so when the relay sees the 12v on signal then the 120 on the secondaries gets connected.

so then all you have to do is to hook a yellow and a black wire from one of the disk drive connectors, to the 12v primary sides of the relay. when 12 is on the primary, 120 is energized and will power all the rest of whatever is in your cabinet.

when you tell the computer to shutdown and it does, the 12v signal goes away and the relay opens and also shuts off all of your 120 volt stuff in the cabinet.

I hope this helps the question a bit.

[mvsfan]

Thanks for the replies guys, im def gona look into this a bit more on my days off, the computer in the cabinet is infact a COMPAQ (eww) and not a dell sorry.

Dells are just as bad as Compaq. I dont know about the latest machines out there, but as far as im concerned, Emachines ranks up in my top list of Package Pcs.
I have only owned 1 emachine desktop that was made back in 2002. But, all i can say about it is that the entire thing is made out of standard ATX parts. Nothing fancy (or Proprietary) in it.

Have you priced a gateway, HP, or Dell power supply lately?

[DaOld Man]

All good suggestions.
I spliced into the wires going to my PC power button and wired to a regular arcade button to turn the machine on.
To turn it off, I used a program that shuts the computer off when I exit Mala (I think Mala will do this without using my program.)

I have been tossing around an idea of using a DPDT switch that looks just like an arcade on/off power switch, but wires into the PC's power switch, same as the button I previously described.
It would work by using capacitors to pulse the switch leads when turned to on position, then pulse it again when turned to off position, but you would have to set up the PC in BIOS to turn off when the power button is pressed again, and I dont think all PCs will do this.

My idea is to give the appearance of a "real" arcade machine.
You would have to play around with capacitor values to find the right one to give the correct pulse for your PC.
Here's the schematic I drew up:

[mvsfan]

i too have a dell system in cab , its an xps 600 and it also has one of those boards connected by a ribbon.

do what i did and you wont have any problems. all you need is soldering iron and small pair of pliers.

(1) locate the original dell power button .
(2) now look at the back of it and you will see where the pins stick out . ( should be 4 of them )
(3) then take your pliers and start touching 2 pins at the same time to find the circuit ( pc will switch on )
(4) take a note of the pins which jumped started the pc and prepare a soldering iron.

now solder the ends of the new wires first and then continue to solder the wires to the pins.
this is easy to do provided you applied solder to the new wire first . and it doesnt matter what colour wire
connects to which pin ( positive or negative ) as all your trying to do is make a connection. happy gaming

The only reason in the world i could think of why a power button would have 4 wires on it would be that two of them are for a light and the other two are for the on/off signal.

best thing to do if you dont know is to start poking at pairs with a DMM until you find the wires for the light. Their should be a constant voltage of either 12v or 5v detected there. any common sence conclusion would be that the black wires would be ground although not always.

so what im saying is that the other wire connected to ground should be your soft on/off switch.

my other question would be do you have a 12v mini lamp in a socket with connector probes at the other end? if not, you need to make one.

a light that does not light up wont damage anything. But if you take a guess and connect that 12v light source to the soft on/off you stand a good chance of taking out that feature on your mobo.

[mvsfan]

All good suggestions.
I spliced into the wires going to my PC power button and wired to a regular arcade button to turn the machine on.
To turn it off, I used a program that shuts the computer off when I exit Mala (I think Mala will do this without using my program.)

I have been tossing around an idea of using a DPDT switch that looks just like an arcade on/off power switch, but wires into the PC's power switch, same as the button I previously described.
It would work by using capacitors to pulse the switch leads when turned to on position, then pulse it again when turned to off position, but you would have to set up the PC in BIOS to turn off when the power button is pressed again, and I dont think all PCs will do this.

My idea is to give the appearance of a "real" arcade machine.
You would have to play around with capacitor values to find the right one to give the correct pulse for your PC.
Here's the schematic I drew up:

You could go one further and just set up windows for an immediate shutdown whenever the power button is pressed instead of the hold it for 5 seconds that is set up by default.

[DaOld Man]

Yes, thats the way the circuit I envisioned would work, just with this type of switch, it looks and feels like the original power switch in the back of the arcade cabs.

[mvsfan]

Yes, thats the way the circuit I envisioned would work, just with this type of switch, it looks and feels like the original power switch in the back of the arcade cabs.

Okay, ive got it now.

How about a pc set for immediate shutdown, with a Momentary toggle switch wired to the power on/off leads on the pc, put in place of a direct 110 on/off switch like the original cabinets came with?

so whenever you bump this toggle switch, it fakes itself well enough to pass for the original switch on the cabinet? that will eliminate the whole entire capacitors and other extra parts and simplify things enough where it would in fact satisfy me, but mabeye not other people who still want to hear an audible click.

[DaOld Man]

Yeah that would work.

[Flip The Switch]

Jobs done, just followed the wires from the power button, which were both white, going to the jumpers, just cut the white wires (still attached to the jumpers) and crimped on 2 lugs and ran them to a micro switch, just need to get a button now

[The Lumberjackass]

i too have a dell system in cab , its an xps 600 and it also has one of those boards connected by a ribbon.

do what i did and you wont have any problems. all you need is soldering iron and small pair of pliers.

(1) locate the original dell power button .
(2) now look at the back of it and you will see where the pins stick out . ( should be 4 of them )
(3) then take your pliers and start touching 2 pins at the same time to find the circuit ( pc will switch on )
(4) take a note of the pins which jumped started the pc and prepare a soldering iron.

now solder the ends of the new wires first and then continue to solder the wires to the pins.
this is easy to do provided you applied solder to the new wire first . and it doesnt matter what colour wire
connects to which pin ( positive or negative ) as all your trying to do is make a connection. happy gaming

The only reason in the world i could think of why a power button would have 4 wires on it would be that two of them are for a light and the other two are for the on/off signal.

best thing to do if you dont know is to start poking at pairs with a DMM until you find the wires for the light. Their should be a constant voltage of either 12v or 5v detected there. any common sence conclusion would be that the black wires would be ground although not always.

so what im saying is that the other wire connected to ground should be your soft on/off switch.

my other question would be do you have a 12v mini lamp in a socket with connector probes at the other end? if not, you need to make one.

a light that does not light up wont damage anything. But if you take a guess and connect that 12v light source to the soft on/off you stand a good chance of taking out that feature on your mobo.

i never said 4 wires, i said 4 pins .
the pins on the back of the switch " plug " into the prop board and they are used as a method to attach the button to the board
as well as acting as a method to switch on the pc. although only 3 pins are attached to circuitry on the board , only 2 pins are needed
to allow it to switch on and off.

while there are 2 leds on the board ( power and hdd activity ) , they are not located on the switch itself .