Hi everyone, I was wondering if anyone could help me with some electrical wiring? For my next mod, I am planning to have a chain of switches that would have to be in a specific position before the computer would turn on. I was planning to do this by splitting the ATX power leads that go into the motherboard, and running them through several ON-OFF switches before it would go back the the motherboard. In theory, it should cause the computer to start. Also, there will be a LED that will light up when all of the switches are in the correct position, before pushing the final "Power on" pushbutton. I attached a (very crude) diagram below, and I was wondering if it would work. Thanks!
You can do it using DPDT switches, so one side is connecting the wires which short the mobo power trigger, and the other side of the switches will connect the wiring for the led, from +5vsb to gnd, with an appropriate resistor. here You can do it using SPDT switches, but you can't wire the led in series like that. The +ve of the led would attach to the +5vsb of the psu, with an appropriate resistor, but the difference is that gnd would be going through the mobo power connector... which probably wouldn't be a problem but inspecting mobo's aint easy with their multiple layers! TL;DR: stick to option #1
Yes, but no need for batteries. You can use the pc psu for power. The +5vsb wire is always live with 5v. And led gnd and be any gnd on the case or any gnd psu wire. Check out the label on your psu.
I thought about that, but here is the problem: these switches aren't exactly going to be near the case, if you know what I mean.
Hrrrm Shouldn't be a problem i think... You need two wires going from these switches to the mobo, so that could be a two core cable. Add another one or two depending on how you wire the led, and you can use a three or four core cable. No biggie, thin cable can easily handle leds, unless you are gonna hook up say 50 high brightness or a few luxeons, etc!
Agreed a thin cable should be fine, hell you could just Heatshink multiple cables if you're really worried. Just make sure they're long enough. There's always the option of incorporating the switches into a 5.25" front slot.
This is the circuit you will want. or if you want the LED only to come on after the first 2 Although you could switch the switches in any order to switch it on. A way around this (and it works better anyway) is to have the last switch as a momentary switch as the power button is a momentary switch. It is possible to have a certain order to have it switch on, but that requires a lot more circuitry and chisp.
Yes, that's what you want! Circuit 2 that r4tch3t provided will work just as you described in your op I re-read it and noticed that last part about the final button And DPST's are fine, no need for DPDT's. Double
