Hacked arcade button to power up cabinet sets off Dell alert message

[theoakade]

Hey guys. Been trying to figure this out. Today I hacked an LED arcade button to power up my Dell 790 Optiplex SFF. Success. The button acts just as a power button would do. Press it to boot computer, press to go into hibernate and hold down to power off.

 

Only problem I have is a Dell diagnostic program giving me a message .... "Alert. Power Button Cable failure." Here is the message...

 

When I press F2 it takes me to the BIOS. Here is a pic with all the settings opened...

 

 

More settings...

 

 

Here is what I get when I press F5. It's Dell's ePSA program. Self diagnostics. It spots a difference in the power cable I hacked.

 

And another...

 

The Dell front power button had 5 wires. BLK, R, Y, B and O. I noticed on the MOBO which colors sat across from each other. The microswitch has BLK on the bottom and Y in the middle. The LED has R and B hooked up to it, leaving O free from anything.

 

The computer boots up. The Dell POST screen splashes. And then I'm hit with the "Alert!" message. 

How do I get around this? Can I skip the cable test in ePSA? Should I reset CMOS battery? Reset BIOS? Update BIOS? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Once this is done, the Hyperspin cabinet is 100% complete!!!!

[theoakade]

Should I reattach the O wire? Maybe I should start there.

[Lucky1]

Hi

 

Let me know what you end up with if you find it.

 

I have a Dell optiplex too in my cabinet and I have to hook up a switch button to finish my cabinet as well. I could not figure how to reach that front power switch on the dell without destroying the casing. 

 

Do you have pictures of your hardware setup ?

or have you found instructions online?

[theoakade]

Hi

Let me know what you end up with if you find it.

I have a Dell optiplex too in my cabinet and I have to hook up a switch button to finish my cabinet as well. I could not figure how to reach that front power switch on the dell without destroying the casing.

Do you have pictures of your hardware setup ?

or have you found instructions online?

Hey. I just looked at the cable that connected the motherboard to the power button. I saw there were 5 wires. The LED button has 4. Trial and error got it up and working. One Orange wire was left out of the mix.

I'd love to know how to bypass this message.

[Metalzoic]

No idea. What exactly do you mean you "hacked" your power button? What exactly did you do to connect it?

I just attached mine directly to the pins on the motherboard itself (with the pin connector) that the power button on the case should plug into. connected that to a standard arced pushbutton that is hidden on top of my cab. It's never given an error.

[madhatter3339]

yeah your power  wires attached to your motherboard should only be two wires one positive and one negative! you should also have reset wires neg and pos. you may be confusing power led wires too. Those are different from your power wires and are meant to light up to show you that you are getting power. Same with harddrive led power wires. they are meant to light up to show you that you have power to your harddrive and will flash when you have activity!!

[Anpanman]

I had this issue with a stack of Dell 780 USFF units i bought. The power and LED boards needed to stay on the board in order to boot. Because of this, i desoldered the power button on the board and simply soldered a wire to where the switch used to be. Then i reattached the power/LED board back on the pc. Worked fine.

[theoakade]

Let me take some detailed pics cause I'd love to get this done.

[theoakade]

OK. Here we go. This is where the front panel power button cable connected to on the motherboard. Six-pin housing with five wires. BLK, R, Y, B and O.

 

 

I cut the cable. I added wire to each line to give me length to work with and added a labeled tag to each. After a little trial and error I found that BLK and Y powered on the computer as the button used to. I also saw that R and B together acted as the LED- coming on when the computer did so, going off when the computer shuts down. I did not see how it acted in SLEEP mode so I'm not sure if it blinks. That leaves Orange as the odd wire out. I just put some tape on the end and let it be free.

 

I took some PCI covers off the back of the case. Took 4 speaker wires and connected them appropriately.

 

 

Here is how I hooked up to the button. Remember, Orange is loose wire.

 

 

Any ideas? I can't find out what each color represents cause Dell thinks it's some top secret shit. Any ideas?

[theoakade]

Any help greatly appreciated.

[theoakade]

Would splicing the original front panel wires back into the mix help? So basically from the button.... BLK, Y, R and B spliced into the speaker wire that is already spliced with the motherboard wire, that then heads out to the button. The orange wire simply reattach to itself. 

That would basically be the original signal loop, with the arcade button in the middle. The button should still work, and the power/signal from the motherboard to the front panel would reach each other and vice versa.

[theoakade]

I'ma go ahead and do that...

1) Front panel BLK, Y, R and B spliced with original motherboard BLK, Y, R and B and speaker wire that leads to button.

2) Front panel orange to motherboard orange.

See what happens. Front panel will get original signal and button in the middle will hopefully still work without setting off an alert message.

[theoakade]

I took off the front power button. Clearly red and blue (as I have them) are meant for an LED of some sort. On the other side black, yellow and orange are grouped. I currently have black and yellow going to the button with orange being free.

 

 

 

What I'm going to do is splice the front panel button wires into the mix and reattach orange.

[theoakade]

The hornets net...

 

Windows boots!!

 

 

Blue light is back on the comp...
 

 

But here's my new problem. The green arcade light stays on when the computer is off.  Turns off when computer is on. Basically opposite of what I want.

 

[theoakade]

OK. Final post. Here is how I installed everything.

 

There are 5 wires connecting the front power button to the motherboard in a Dell 790 SFF Optiplex. I spliced the YELLOW and BLACK wires to the arcade buttons. BLUE, RED and ORANGE stayed going to the motherboard. I don't get LED functionality but I will survive.

 

No alert message. Boots right up.

[Lucky1]

Great, Now I need to do this on my cab.

 

 

Btw, can you upload some pics of your cab? 

 

Thanks

[iNTiGOD]

OK. Final post. Here is how I installed everything.

 

There are 5 wires connecting the front power button to the motherboard in a Dell 790 SFF Optiplex. I spliced the YELLOW and BLACK wires to the arcade buttons. BLUE, RED and ORANGE stayed going to the motherboard. I don't get LED functionality but I will survive.

 

No alert message. Boots right up.

 

 

I love this stuff... Great guide for people.

 

Btw if you want LED functionality why not just wire it up to your pc PSU?

This guide covers it (although it is for a coin door light, but you get the idea). I did the same for my power button (my led was 12v).

 

Very easy to do and test.... 

 

George

[OniBoi]

So you only used the yellow and black? Did you just cut the others and leave it?

[iNTiGOD]

Yes I used yellow and black (12v and ground) respectively.

So that I didn't cut wiring from my original power supply I used a molex extension cable.

I removed the 2 wires (the red, and spare ground) by using a pin to pull them out.

If you guys want some photos let me know.

[majorspawn]

according to this website the Dell connector wiring is as follow for anyone else:

 

1 orange power led one side
2 red unknown
3 yellow power white
4 blue led other side
5 black power orange


when looking at mother board
321
54

http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/dell-optiplex-7010-motherboard.198629/

 

so yellow and black...

[Metalzoic]

This thread still confuses me with the power button pics having big, multiple wires running into a big clip connector.

The 2 or 3 setups I've seen (including my own) the power button was attached to the motherboard using those tiny pin connectors with just 2 normal, smallish wires.

Is the setup in here just specific to Dell brand?

[AshleyD]

Iv'e worked it out, I bothered to register to save someone else the hassle as took me alot of trial and error to resolve. 

I have the same power switch cable and pin out on motherboard.

I have connected successfully to a momentary switch without F1 error & with led working when powered on and led off when switched off

So here it is

Black = Power Negative/Ground

Yellow = Power Positive

Blue and Orange cables = LED Power, I believe this works any way but i do have orange on + and Blue on -.

Red = Your guess is as good as mine.

 

So to hook up to momentary switch follow connection below

Black cable to COMMON

Yellow cable to NO (Normally Open)

Orange cable to LED +

Blue cable to LED -

Red cable to NO (Normally Open) Must be connected to avoid F1 error on boot.

 

I know this will help someone as these old dells will surely be reused for mame builds.

Some pictures of my arcade build below, Just need to put side decals and t moulding. Getting there!

 

 

 

[theflashdesign]

I just jumped red wire to yellow no more error

Thank you

[dark13]

Don't you have "restore on power loss" on ACPI bios menu? If you enable it the pc will start automatically when energy comes again after power loss, doing the thing on an acer veriton that will go into an arcade cabinet.
A power strip with a button to give/toggle energy to the strip and a tv/monitor that automatically turn on after power loss (some does, some does not) and the whole thing will start when you press the power botton of the strip. To turn off the thing you need to turn off the computer then toggle energy to the strip. With an UPS that turn off the pc on power loss you would have just to press the power strip button to turn on/turn off the cab

[bigTofC]

Thank you all for the info here. I had the same issue and without this article I wouldn’t have been able to get an external power button working on my dell optiplex 7020.