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trying to wire an arcade button to the power button on my pc

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BobA:

The wires are on a ribbon cable attached to the front panel daughter board.  He needs a way to connect a wire across the 2 points in the ribbon cable when he reattaches it. 

The two points in the ribbon cable now tell you what pins need to be shorted when the cable is plugged in.   You can either strip the cable to get at the wires to attach your wires or you can trace the 2 points back to the daughter board to see if there are pads where you can connect your wires or you could solder to the power switch on the daughter board. Another way is to use a wirewrap tool to put some kynar wire around the pins so you have room to plug the ribbon cable back in.   

If you do not need the plugins on the daughter board you can simply leave it out of the circuit.   Use a ribbon cable with the same connector or the one you are testing and pry the back off of the connector. This will expose all the wires and your you can get at the exact wires that need to be shorted to turn on your PC.

katuuuz:

Bob, thank you that was a useful post i will be bookmarking for when I get there.  Turns out with my wires sticking out of the alleged power holes, touching them together doesn't turn the pc on.  i tried a bunch of different hole configurations and can't get it to power on by touching the wire ends together.  also upon further investigation, i was able to get the dmm to sound on another configuration or two.  it's not possible for there to be more than 2 inputs for power-on is it? 

Also, does everything have to be connected to power on?  or if i did get the right hole combination would it turn on by touching the wires without the rest of the daugter board connected?

this is frustrating.

katuuuz:

Further prodding has me at this assumption:

I'm pretty sure the top right-most hole is the ground.  (green line in pic)Why do I think this?  Because when i have the green wire in, connecting my second wire to any other color slot pictured, DMM reads "short" when i press in the dell power button.  if i were to put the green where blue, yellow, or red is, the DMM shorts without pressing the power button.  I don't know why 3 seperate combinations  (green-blue, green-red, green-yellow) short the DMM when jumpered and the power button is pushed. 

do i have to resort on powering the arcade up on dc recovery, or wil i still be able to wire a button somehow?

Edit: I'm about to give up for the night and just figured.. because this connector I'm poking wires in isn't plugged into the I/O board, it's not connected to the power source either.  So even if I touched the wires together in the proper hole configuration, the pc wouldn't boot until the connector is back in place on the I/O.  So i have to determine which of the 3 "short-on-power button" configurations is the correct one a different way...  this sucks. 

RandyT:


I know you've gone well past this point, but I urge you to look at the other board in that machine.  There should be another board with the power switch on it.   It should be a normal, simple tactile type switch, very similar in function to the switch you want to connect to it. 

IMHO, that's where you should be working.  If you can get that one out, take photos of it.

katuuuz:


--- Quote from: RandyT on December 16, 2010, 09:22:55 pm ---
I know you've gone well past this point, but I urge you to look at the other board in that machine.  There should be another board with the power switch on it.   It should be a normal, simple tactile type switch, very similar in function to the switch you want to connect to it. 

IMHO, that's where you should be working.  If you can get that one out, take photos of it.

--- End quote ---

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/17667049.aspx

read the first 4 posts.  unless this guys is as clueless as me, i'm not sure there is a microswitch.  i pray you are right though.  not sure how to get this damn front panel off either.

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