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Wiring a button to the PC start up button
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:
--- Quote from: Flip The Switch on July 31, 2010, 05:31:29 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---
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:
--- Quote from: The Lumberjackass on July 31, 2010, 06:01:49 am ---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 :)
--- End quote ---
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:
--- Quote from: DaOld Man on July 31, 2010, 09:35:37 pm ---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:
--- End quote ---
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.
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