i was not able to sleep last night so i started thinking(why all ways when you have to sleep ) what if you do some wiring and put a start lock for a car as your start button on the first step starts the lights the second starts the water cooling rig the third the computer! is it possible? i think it is with some modding on the cables!
Get an old ignition key switch from a car and spend a couple of hours testing it with a multimeter, and see if you can work out how to do that could be possible... you might need to make some sort of relay to turn on the watercooling, and you'd have to make a seperate "lighting" ring for all the lights so you can turn them off independantly to the rest of the system. Come to think of it, you'd have to work out a way to have the power supply turn on without powering the motherboard. Hmm.... that could be tricky ..
no the motherbord will have power,i hope.you can short sercut a power supply to think its connected, hell if you connet the right pins in the motherbord power intake you can get only the fans to run.
Well... ok the motherboard IS powered all the time, but when you short the on switch it powers up, and the ATX header starts to power everything, and the molex connectors start to be powered. So you'd have to work out a way to power the molex power leads without having the motherboard boot (presuming you want fans, lights and THEN the machine boots up.. so you could have fans lights and no system)
i know i thought about that. the solution is that you run power directly from another power if you have the room for it or/and you make the power think you have a motherboard connect it! i wrote "whit some minor modding" (i think )
Hmm... sounds like a plan I'm sure they'res an easier way to do that though, rather than have 2 power supplies for the sake of a switch. Unless you have 2 power supplies anyway? One for the main system and one for the mods?
I think you're going to have to use two PSUs. If the keyswitch has three terminals and a "common" terminal, you could rig the "start" setting (all the way forward) to the main PC's PSU, because it would only be momentary. The "run" position could be set to short the secondary (light and fan) PSU. How you'd get this all to turn off, though, I haven't a clue. I'd be willing to bet the folks over in the electronics forum would know how to do it. They might even know how to make only 1 PSU do the job.
Could you not wire the green/black wire combo (that makes the power supply start) to the second position and then have the third position actually short the motherboard pins and start the computer?
if you look on the ATX plug to your power supply (the big one that goes on your motherboard) you'll see multi colored wires. If you take a paper clip or something and short a green wire with a black one the powersupply will start even if nothing is hooked up to it. So that's step one. I'm not positive as to how a motherboard gets turned on, but i'm sure it's just a set of pins somewhere that detect power. Shorting those pins would be step two.
My understanding of how the motherboard turns on is: The two wires from the ATX cable (green + black) are routed through the motherboard to the pins that you connect the case power switch to. So the only thing you need to do to start the motherboard is short the two pins that the power switch goes to. I've done it before, works like a charm! Just look in the manual for the right pins.
I guess the on-switch on the motherboard starts up the actual motherboard and initiates the boot process, and also shorts the green/black wires to give it power. I'm not sure what would happen if you supplied the motherboard with power without starting the boot process. Hopefully nothing!
sounds like an nteresting mod you have there, allthough i'd try out the shorting the green and black ATX wires without pressing the power button on an old mobo lol. In fact i might try that for you in a min on an old rig of mine, see if it blows up or starts up or what.
If you keep the reset button pressed in after pressing the on button, the machine will power up but not start the boot sequence. So you just need to do that electronically. IIRC green & black have to be permanently connected for the psu to stay on, but the case power switch is momentary action.
i was thinking of it like this,this shod work first u put on on you computer from the last stage then you can turn the key so that only fans are on but no light. Then turn off the fans and The light but the computer is still running. you can put it in standby mode and no van can start it except you with the key. not sure do uuups one problem im color blind hmm must have a look inside
I'm slightly confused noobidoo. Now, using the reset button to delay the boot process... now *thats* clever Might be a bit of a challenge to get the key switch to turn OFF the reset button when on the final stage, but not turn it back on again when it springs back a stage. So what, somthing like this : Stage 0 (nothing shorted, nothing on, the key is in OFF position) Stage 1 (short black/green, power fans+lights, reset button shorted) Stage 2 (take off reset button, motherboard starts boot sequence) *springs back* Stage 1 (motherboard booted, black/green open, reset button open) Hmm... what about when you want to turn off? Because the key would be in position 1, but the machine powers down automatically... but what if you wanted to force a power down? (if the machine freezes)... when what?
to turn on a psu without a mobo just jump the green wire with any black wire (on the atx conn.) from there you can figure it out seems like a cool mod, pretty time consuming and a bit hard, if you can fit another psu in your case, then go with that method
