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

[katuuuz]

Hey guys.

I picked up this dimension 4600c because it was nice and compact for my smaller sized cab. problem is, now that the software end is finished, I'm left wondering if I can even wire a cherry switch to the power button so I can turn the pc on from the outside of the cabinet. Did some looking around at the dell guides to figure out how to do this, when I found out the power button isn't wired to a microswitch at all. Apparently it is somehow connected to a cable that runs to the I/O panel if that makes any sense to anyone else. Because it does not make sense to me.  Here is a link to the I/O removal instructions:

http://support.dell..../sm/iopanel.htm

I haven't had the chance to get a look at how the power button on the pc is actually connected, because i cant get the gol' darn case apart in the front.  urrrgh dell.

any idea if I can in fact do this?
 

P.S. i'm not interested in that sketchy power strip hack... i prefer my apartment to not be on fire.

[severdhed]

that link doesn't work....


as for the power switch, you will need to get access to the actual power switch of the pc, there should be a switch mounted to a small PCB.  you should be able to solder two wires to that pcb where the power switch attaches.

[Donkbaca]

Where do the wires from the power switch attach to the MB?

[SavannahLion]

I'm surprised you found anything at all on Dell's website. They've gotten all crappy and removed all their legacy documents. I hope I archived the repair documents for the Inspirons.

What the OP is probably talking about is the lame daughter board Dell puts in some of their PCs. It's not exactly a direct plug-in to the motherboard.

I'm not sure I understand what you're wanting. The switch should just be a momentary switch. Just cut the wires and wire it up to your cherry on the appropriate connections and you should be fine. There's no point in bypassing the existing daughter board for something like this.

[katuuuz]

I can't seem to get the front panel of the pc off... Nor is there any instructions on how to do so.  Dell dimension 4600c.

[BobA]

I think that daughterboard on the frontpanel attaches to the main panel via a multipin connector sort of like the FP of most motherboard connections except it is probably not documented by Dell and the connector is one piece not separate bits like most front panels.   If you can take the connector off the MB then you can use a multimeter to determine which contacts are closed when the power button is pressed.   You do not have to get the frontpanel off.

[katuuuz]

Ok I have a multimeter and I know of the multi pin connector you are speaking of.  I had it disconnected last night in my efforts to get to the front panel.  It is a ribbon coming from the front panel power button and it plugs into the I/o board which is connected to the system board.  So if I unplug the power ribbon from the I/o, I'm to prod my multimeter into the female connector on this I/o board correct?  Nit the unplugged connector leading to the power button... Or do I have it backwards?  Also, which multimeter prods am I sticking into the holes?  Can I achieve the correct reading with the pc power off or should it be on?  What should I be looking for the multimeter to display?  Sorry, I bought the multimeter when I started collecting real arcade games to test voltage, never used one in this scenario.

[SavannahLion]

OP when copying and pasting your post from other forums, At least make it easier for us to help you by double checking your post for broken links. The page it can be had now. Hopefully.... I accessed the page five minutes ago, but now the DELL site is acting like it's not there anymore. WTF?

I think that daughterboard on the frontpanel attaches to the main panel via a multipin connector sort of like the FP of most motherboard connections except it is probably not documented by Dell and the connector is one piece not separate bits like most front panels.   If you can take the connector off the MB then you can use a multimeter to determine which contacts are closed when the power button is pressed.   You do not have to get the frontpanel off.

The iopanel (If the link is working today) board appears to be a little more involved than that. His best bet is probably the ribbon cable on the right (if the page ever loads for anyone, might be a good idea to zip it and post it here) which appears to attach to the front panel itself rather than the ribbon cable (Is that an IDE cable?!) that connects the daughter board to the motherboard.

If there's IC's on the board then something is getting modified between it and the motherboard.

[katuuuz]

Sorry about the broken link.  So in order to trace the switch leads I'm goin to have to remove the case's front panel, correct?

[SavannahLion]

Sorry about the broken link.  So in order to trace the switch leads I'm goin to have to remove the case's front panel, correct?

No, I thought about it some and modified my original post. You might be able to do it by checking the ribbon cable that runs from the iopanel to the front panel. I think it's a ribbon cable. Kind of hard to tell if I can't double check when DELL keeps taking it down.

[katuuuz]

When I get home tonight I'll attach the image of the io panel to this thread.  Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this.  I also would like to thank you for your interest in helping me.

[garnerb350]

Katuuuz... when you get home place the tower in your lap with the front facing your right... pop open the case and underneath the hard drive you will see 6 wires ( might be bundled) those are the wires that are for your power & 2 led lights ( system busy, etc) ... Follow them to your motherboard...they should connect to a set of pins....i think around the middle/top right ( im trying to remember this )  The second set of pins from the top (green & brown wire???) should be the ones for power...

My mame cab uses a 4600 and what i did was take a regular pushbutton and wired it to an old 2 pin motherboard connector wire... like one here



Now you might have more wires @ the bottom (those are for the front usb hub) but you can figure out what goes to what ... 4600 was the first PC i started tinkering with and i was amazed at how simple it was when you spend time messing with it...

Hope this doesnt confuse you more...Currently im away from my cab and im going off memory from 2 years ago...

[BobA]

The 4600c is a compact case and does not have the same connections as the tower.

[katuuuz]

Yeah as boba stated, my 4600c guts are different from your 4600's.  Thanks for the insight though.  I should have researched the 4600c before purchase.  I'm almost ready to say screw it and buy a micro atx board.  I really don't want to spend the $ but dells are... Well, they are dells.

I just found this article about how the power button on this model is connected.  Maybe one of you understand what it is that I can do:

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

[BobA]

Don't give up yet.

As I said previously  If you can take the connector off the MB then you can use a multimeter to determine which contacts are closed when the power button is pressed.   You do not have to get the front panel off.

If it is a ribbon cable you need a bit of solid wire to put in the various holes in the connector of the ribbon cable.  Put one bit in pin 1 and move the other to all the other pins.  If you measure continuity while pushing the on button you will find the proper pair.   If pin 1 does not work try pin 2 etc etc etc.   Takes a lot of checking but when you find the right pair you will know where to connect your power button.

[Donkbaca]

If I remember right, the computer should turn on when you short two pins that have 5v.  I think that is what you are looking for when you use your multimeter.  I am not sure though.  I remember seeing posts about dell power buttons before when I was looking at how to wire my IBM power button.  IBMs are weird too because they have 4 pairs of wires going to the momentary switch instead of the normal 2, anyhow, I think I came across posts for the dell daughterboard. Have you tried to google it?

[katuuuz]

Yeah, I came up with that above article.  Click and scroll down and it shows a diagram of the I/o board or "daughter" board.

[Donkbaca]

found this:

However, Asus (and other mboard makers that supply mboards to brand name system builders - e.g. HP, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, and most other brand name system builders DO NOT make the mboards themselves) does NOT normally change which pins are for what on that header, or on other headers on the mboard, even if it is an OEM only mboard.
If you want to know which pins are for what on any header on the mboard, if you download and look at the manual for any Asus mboard of a similar age, the pinout assignments are usually identical to those on OEM only mboards.
In this case, look at amboard manual for a socket 478 mboard, although it probably doesn't matter which socket it uses as long as it was made about the same time (or the pinouts may not have changed over time in any case).

and this:
The ATX specification fixed the worst problems of the AT power supply. It took the power switch out of the mains side, so that safety and reliability improved dramatically. It made the power supply switchable from the DC side, so that software shutdown was now possible. This had the side effect of allowing many new switch styles, since the switch no longer had to carry the full current load of the PC, it could be a mini or sub-mini pushbutton, and could be easily located just about anywhere on the case.

So lets look a little closer at how the PC is powered on. The PSU is powered from the mains supply. Some PSUs have their own shutoff switch, which allows interrupting the mains supply for whatever reason. As long as the PSU is powered from the mains, it is also providing your motherboard with a small amount of power from a connector known as the +5VSB (pin 9 of the motherboard connector, connected to a purple wire), or five volt standby. Even though your system is powered down, you are still drawing a small amount of current from this. The circuits that control the power switch are among the things using that power. When you press the power button, you momentarily close a set of contacts. The motherboard circuity reacts to that signal by sending a signal to the PSU. The signal is called the PS_ON# (pin 16 of the motherboard connector, connected to a green wire), and the setting of a LOW voltage (0V) on this connector tells your PSU to deliver full power to your system. Many of you are probably familiar with the trick of “hot-wiring” a PSU by connecting a pin with a black wire to the one with the green wire. In doing this you are forcing 0V on PS_ON#, which starts the power supply. When your computer does this, the circuit holding that pin low is controlled by software, so this is how a soft shutdown works (as well as things like wake-on-modem or wake-on-LAN).

When the PSU is delivering full system power, it’s also required to hold a HIGH (+5V) signal on a connector called PWR_OK (pin 8 of the motherboard connector, connected to a grey wire), which signals to the system that voltages are within tolerances dictated by the specification. These three signals, +5VSB, PS_ON#, and PWR_OK, make up the “housekeeping” connections to your PSU. They allow the management of power by the system, and together solve the problems with the AT spec.

[garnerb350]

       Dang...my bad...I guess I didnt see the "c"... Now you got me wanting to see the compact version... Good luck...

[katuuuz]

Out to dinner, post pics when I get home

[katuuuz]

Ok fellas, things seem to be leaning my way for once.  Got home to see my Sanwa buttons have arrived (christ, these guys are small), and upon cracking open the 4600c and looking a bit closer with the knowledge learned by you today, I think I see what I've been trying to see.  Attatched is a pic of the 4600c slim next to a dead dimension I pulled from the graveyard for garner to see. 

Also attached is a pretty big snap of the I/O board.  The disconnected ribbon has the label "control panel" printed on the pcb.  The larger one behind it that is still plugged in is labeled "front panel."  The smaller one runs up the inside front of the case, and disappears into the unaccessible front of the case and more than likely attaches to the leds, power button, and or usbs.  The larger ribbon labeled "front panel" has the USB logo stamped on the ribbon itself, and connects to the mother board. 

Hopefully I've included enough info for someone to explain to me what I have to do to wire one of these Sanwa buttons up for booting!

[Donkbaca]

Where does the control panel wire connect to the mobo?

[SavannahLion]

@ Donkbaca

That information is all well and good but you're overlooking one important fact.

Regardless of the OEM of the board, they will most certainly do whatever the VARs specify. Anybody who tried to hack or reuse a Compaq power supply can attest to this. Every single VAR has at least one bastardized PC in their line up that has a critical component that isn't 100% compatible with the ATX specification.

That is the case here.

[katuuuz]

??

Looks like I'm going with the boot upon dc recovery option in my bios then.  Thanks everyone for your help.

[Donkbaca]

If you are going to give up on the power button idea, what about wake-on/LAN?

[katuuuz]

If you are going to give up on the power button idea, what about wake-on/LAN?

Not exactly sure what you mean?

[Donkbaca]

Here are my thoughts...

1) you just need to figure out which two wires that connect to the control panel pins have your power on signal.  Its a +5v signal.  you short that with a ground and if the whole thing fires up you have found it.  I don't know if randomly shorting these pins for a moment would hurt your computer.I imagine those pins go to the power button, the HD LED, the Power LED and probably the Speaker. The two wires you want to short are a 5v and a gorund that are right next to each other.  I don't think it would hurt anything,  and heck if you are just going to ditch the whole thing anyway, then i think its worth a shot.

2) if you boot into your bios, there may be a wake-on-lan option.  I was thinking about doing this for my cab.  If your cab is hard wired into your lan, you can remotely boot up the computer from another computer.  If you google "wake-on-lan" you can find a discussion about it.  I was thinking about setting my computer to wake on LAN, and then using an iphone app to turn the whole thing on from my phone.  I was going to plug my computer into a smart strip, and then I would be able to turn everything on from my phone.  I thought that would be cool. I didn't go through with it because I couldn't figure out how to make the cab sleep on LAN, and I didn't want to keep it on all the time, or shutdown my computer from my front end because I didn't want people messing with the front end accidently shut down the cab.  But if those aren't concerns of yours, its an option.

[DillonFoulds]

Put it all together, but leave the case open. Unplug a header, plug in power, and push the power button. If the computer still turns on, then you got the wrong header so repeat. If it doesn't, then you've got the right header.

Once you've found the right header, turn off the computer, and grab a small flat head screwdriver and just start jumpering pins, until your computer turns on. The pins only need to be jumpered for a second to initiate the process. Narrow it down to a couple pins and use those two, wired to a push button to turn on your PC.

It sounds sketchy, but when a computer's turned off, you can't really do any harm to anything by jumpering the wrong pins, and if you turn it on, there's not really much voltage that can harm anything...

Personally, I just used my DMM and found the power button...

[BobA]

Much safer to check the unplugged ribbon cable with a VOM and see which wires have continuity when the power button is pushed.  That way nothing is shorted and everything will work afterwards.   Takes longer though.

[katuuuz]

Personally, I just used my DMM and found the power button...

Ok I have a dmm.  Could you please be mote specific on what I'm to do with it?  I understand what you are saying but don't understand terms like "jumpering" etc.  What do I set the dmm to?  Turn the pc on and start sticking the dmm's prongs in the holes and look for 5v?  I'm lost.

[DillonFoulds]

If your DMM has a mode that looks like o))  (a speaker kinda thing) then it's a continuity test, and whenever the probes are touching, or both on a path that makes them connect, the DMM will beep.

This is probably one of my favourite tools of my DMM, to be honest.

So put one end on the power button wire, with the computer unplugged. Now you can probe around with the other end along any pins on that header until you hear a beep. Easy Peasy!

The only caveat is that you might end up finding the wrong end of the button (the ground) in which case you'll hear a lot of beeps, so probe a different leg on the power button and try again.

[RandyT]

 

This is a simple project...or at least it sounds like it should be.

You have to remove the switch board.  I have seen at least one reference stating that there is a small microswitch on that I/O board that is the power button.

Look at that switch carefully.  Is it a "through hole" type switch?  If so, it's a simple matter to solder another set of wires in parallel with that switch, using the points where the present switch's terminals protrude through and are soldered to the board.  If it's a surface mount switch, it's a little trickier, but still possible.

I don't quite know how screwing around with a ribbon cable is going to help, unless you try to strip one wire out of it, which is not a simple approach.  You could try to solder to the pins of the connector, but if the switch is there, you can solder directly to it without the hunting.

Post a large photo of the front, and back of the I/O board and we'll know for sure the best approach.

RandyT

[katuuuz]

Ok sounds good guys.  I'll extract the i/o panel when I get home and take some pics.  Talk to you guys then.

[SavannahLion]

This is a simple project...or at least it sounds like it should be.

You have to remove the switch board.  I have seen at least one reference stating that there is a small microswitch on that I/O board that is the power button.

Look at that switch carefully.  Is it a "through hole" type switch?  If so, it's a simple matter to solder another set of wires in parallel with that switch, using the points where the present switch's terminals protrude through and are soldered to the board.  If it's a surface mount switch, it's a little trickier, but still possible.

I don't quite know how screwing around with a ribbon cable is going to help, unless you try to strip one wire out of it, which is not a simple approach.  You could try to solder to the pins of the connector, but if the switch is there, you can solder directly to it without the hunting.

Post a large photo of the front, and back of the I/O board and we'll know for sure the best approach.

RandyT

+1
Right now most of us are guessing as to the iopanel design it really isn't that difficultp

[katuuuz]

Ok.  I think I'm on to something with my multimeter.  I unplugged the small ribbon labeled "control panel," plugged in the PC, and was unable to power on with the dell power button.  So, I guess now I know that that small ribbon has something to do with the turning on of the computer.  Upon learning this, I took out my DMM and set it to conducter mode, or whatever (speaker mode lol) and started prodding the pins of this "control panel" connection on the I/O board itself.  I was able to achieve the beeping noise by touching the 2 pins that are aligned in red pencil in the attached photo... also the screen on my DMM displayed "SHRT".  (Short?).  

Upon doing this, I thought I was in like flint, so I went rummiging through my arcade tacklebox only to find a coin switch.  I ghetto rigged some wire to the connections on the coin switch, and then ghetto rigged the opposite ends to the pins highlighted.  I clicked the twine on the coinswitch which resulted in nothing.  I swapped the wires pin-side and tried again with no luck.  

Below is a picture of the face of the daughter board, with the 2 pins I got the "SHRT" reading on connected in red pencil.  Also is the back-side of the daughter board upon request.  Lastly, the third picture is a cord that may be it too.  Maybe I am wrong in being wishful, but those exposed wires look like the power supply wires.  They go from the daughter board to the motherboard and on the motherboard are labeled "Front Audio Mic USB2."  

[DillonFoulds]

If you think those are the pins, jumper them with a screw driver, if the PC turns on then that's them, if not, pick again...

[katuuuz]

Right now most of us are guessing as to the iopanel design it really isn't that difficultp

I'm finding it difficult, although I am inexperienced in this sort of thing.

[katuuuz]

If you think those are the pins, jumper them with a screw driver, if the PC turns on then that's them, if not, pick again...

not excatly sure what you mean by "jumper."  I'm that inexperienced.

[SavannahLion]

Don't use the DMM on the board. Use the DMM on the cable, you'll probably need a short piece of wire to get in there. Hold the switch down and do the test with the DMM.

[BobA]

+1 for SavannahLion

Do not short the Motherboard. Do all your work on the daughter board ribbon cable.   If you short the MB there is a USB connector and audio in the mix from the daughterboard and you could take out your USB or audio.  Remember the short only appears when you push your power button.