Dell Optiplex 380 SFF arcade button power wiring

[Tetsuo1981]

Hi all

Have just received an old Dell Optiplex 380 SFF which is going to replace a really old advent t9000 as the base of my mame cabinet I'm slowly building. I've looked around trying to figure out how to wire an arcade button to power the machine up. This computer has no mobo headers / pins and the switch is on a separate board (dell part no XW055) connected by a ribbon cable (dell part no UM941). Seen these posts: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=148167.0
And: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,128837.0.html
As well as: http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forums/topic/26663-hacked-arcade-button-to-power-up-cabinet-sets-off-dell-alert-message/

My thinking so far is to buy a replacement ribbon cable, cut it in half, extend and use spade connectors to be able to sit and systematically work through and find the power switch (and possibly power led) wires to make it work. To avoid the power button error message (and to hopefully keep all the functions of the front board) I would then keep everything connected and splice further down to add the button but keeping the 'original' wiring intact.

Thats the plan at the moment, wanted to throw this out here to see if anyone else has any suggestions or advice. My soldering is shockingly bad so wanted to avoid it at all costs. All comments are welcome and to see if anyone else had attempted this before

Cheers guys

[thomas_surles]

I have a similar setup. I was originally going to wire a button to the power button, but instead got a power inlet, wired the power strip to that. Then in the dell bios, I set it to turn on when power is connected. So when you flip the switch on the inlet everything turns on.

[Haloman800]

I'll probably get scolded, but I simply enabled "boot when power connected" in the Dell BIOS, I hooked everything up to a power switch, and I flip it on/off as needed. Never had any errors and no wiring required.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

[Tetsuo1981]

@thomas_surles @Haloman800 yeah, I might have to resort to that in the end. How do you guys go about powering down your cab? Do you set a shutdown in your front end? Sorry if these are noon questions.

Cheers

[thomas_surles]

Yeah I just shut down in the front end then flip the switch off when it's down.

[Tetsuo1981]

Nice one. Cheers for that

[thomas_surles]

Read this if you go that route

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,151855.msg1592812.html#msg1592812

[Tetsuo1981]

Its taken me nearly 4 months but all sorted now. Tried splicing into ribbon cable and after nearly blowing myself up resorted to soldering 2 wires to the back of the power switch and hooking them up to my microswitch. Then modded a broken micro USB cable to act as lower for the led giving me a fully working illuminated power button for my soon-to-be built cabinet!