Help me make a Power on switch

bugler

Hey, I suppose this, in a way belongs here...anyway. I still have the same old case that came with my dell dimension, it's a grand case, except of course it has one those special power connectors that only fitted properly on the mobo that came with it. I have to form a bridge between the two power on pins to boot up. I'd like to sort this out once and for all. I have the cable, it has lots of wires, and I have my various power/led pins How do I get the desired result? I've tried wrapping a couple of wires around the two pins but its tricky and hasn't been successful thus far.

Also, a brief query, I have a DVD drive and a CD-Writer, but none of the IDE cables I have are long enough to reach both drives and then onto the mobo. I'm about an inch or two short of the target. Solution = ?

PPC

What you could do is find an old case and take the reset switch from it. That'll work.
Otherwise you could get a digital audio cable from a cd rom drive as it has 2 holes in it, place it on the motherboard and get a momentary switch and put it on the other end.

As for the ide cables I'd say you'd need to get longer ones or arrange you drives in a different way.

Gerry

I think the neatest solution would be to use your existing one. Get/borrow a multimeter. Set it to the continuity function ( hopefully it has one ). This just checks if there is a circuit. Test it by touching the 2 multimeter leads off each other, the meter should beep. Tape or somehow have the power switch held down, and test all the wires on that dell connector. You should be able to find the right wires, you just need to attach them to the motherboard pins then.

IDE cables can vary in the amount of space between the 2 drive connectors. Is the cable long enough to reach the top drive if you only plug the top drive in? If so you just need to see if the cables in shops have enough space. I think itdirect have longer rounded ide cables, but they'll cost a bit.

Tazzle

alternatively, you could get a jumper if you have a spare one, stick it on the power on pins. This is only a viable alternative if your psu has a power switch, then you now have to use that switch to turn on and off. Would work if your plug outlet had a switch too...

Gerry

Atx uses a momentary switch, which means that you just have to bridge the contacts for a split second, and the power goes on. Having this switch closed all the time is going to give unpredictable results.

strat

Reminds me of when I built my machine 9 months ago when I conencted up all the power/reset/hdd leds etc little wires the pc would bot up with no puttons being pressed, after a while I discovered it was the power switch was broken and was stuck 'on' the pc would, wouldnt get as far as POSTing and then turn off - heres me thinking me motherboard was shagged

I eventually just used the reset button to turn it on/off and err- its stil like that atm - must fix that some day

basically as Gerry said - having the main powerbutton <always> ON is a bad idea


-edit-

PPC

Remind me at the next all night lan and ill bring ya a switch and fix it up for ya.