One button power on question

[WLVRYN]

I got a Bits Smart Strip and I want to wire my computer to use a one button power on using an arcade button.  There's another thread that I found here about it:  http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=44307.0 .  This should be no big deal, but my power button also has a reset button and two LEDs mounted on a small controller card.  That controller card has a 16 ribbon cable that runs to the motherboard.  Because the ribbon cable uses all the pins on the motherboard interface, I dont know which pins to use to wire up the arcade button for the power (and dont want to try trial and error).  My son's ancient POS computer uses pins 6&8 wired to the power button, but I'm not sure if this is standard or not.   I also dont want to cut the ribbon cable if I can avoid it in case I cant get the button wired.  Does anyone have any experience with this?  My computer is a Dell Dimension 8100 and as far as I can tell the motherboard is a Planar (though I cant seem to find any info on the web about Planar mobos).

Thanks.

[SavannahLion]

I doubt it's any help but I would start at Dells own site: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dsleest/index.htm

I found the pin-outs for the PSU itself, but not for the controller card yet. Sorry I can't be of much help, but I ran out of time. I'll look into it later if no one else has a solution.

If you're brave, solder off the old switch and wire in a new one or piggyback a new one at the contact points of the existing switch.

[WLVRYN]

Yeah, I tried there to no avail.  After doing a bit more digging (and posting in Dell's help forum), it seems that Dell's mobos, at least for some of the older models, are proprietary and non-standard.  Because they are proprietary, Dell wont publish the pinouts for the power switch and front control panel connector.

Will I screw up my motherboard if I go the trial and error route to wire the power switch?

[grundle]

First, determine which pins on the MB go to ground, then (with the computer off, not on or in standby) short the other pins one by one to ground.  The other pins are likely just reset, speaker, etc, so you shouldn't hurt anything else by shorting them.

This is what I would do (with high confidence), but don't hold me accountable if it breaks...

[SavannahLion]

First, determine which pins on the MB go to ground, then (with the computer off, not on or in standby) short the other pins one by one to ground.  The other pins are likely just reset, speaker, etc, so you shouldn't hurt anything else by shorting them.

That's what I thought about suggesting but without looking at the actual PCB, I thought it was better not to. OEM companies like Dell are ---daisies--- when it comes to their proprietary ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. I've thrown out a lot of useful (useless?) hardware simply because I couldn't figure out the pinouts. I used to get a lot of free hardware and I ended up discarding about 75% of it because of all that useless proprietary ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. Nothing more maddening than getting six hot swappable rack mount PSUs only to find they fit nothing other than crappy Compaq motherboards 

[xmenxmen]

Tracing it is probably the best approach here.  When I gutted an old Gateway server and re-use it for a modern atx motherboard, I basically took the front cover off and look where the power switch was and trace the wire back to the root.  Once I knew which wire it was, I just took a knife and divdied the wires so I can easly tap it.  Took a sound card to cdrom wire and cut off one end and on the other end, chop off 2 of the 4 connector.  Than expose the wire on the wire and tap the open end of the sound card wire to it and attach that to the motherboard. 

In your case, just divide out the power wire from the rest so there's room to tap it.  Tap wires to it and move it to where ever U want.  Repeat the same thing for the reset and light if you want.

[xmenxmen]

Forgot to mention, the stupid Gateway has those one block connection as well. 

And for those that remember, it's the $500 Gateway dual 933 tower, which everyone used as a nice and fast workstation!!!

[WLVRYN]

Thanks Xmen.  The only problem is that I really dont want to mess with the ribbon cable in case for whatever reason I cant get this working right.  At least then I'd still have a way to turn the computer on.  I think I'm going to go with Grundle's suggestion and see if I can get it working. 

Now I'm going to ask a really stupid question:  How do I determine which pins are wired to ground? (ducking and covering head for not knowing this).

I ended up getting an ATX front bezel wire kit from MicroCenter to wire to the pins.  I think it was $5 or something.   Its actually a nice little kit with wires for power, reset, sleep and three LEDs.   I had read about using the CD-ROM/sound card cable on another site and was going to go down that path, but this seemed to be much easier.