PC Case Swap 2

[ih8bills]

I have a 3 year old Dell Dimension 4300 which I have upgraded by adding a 2nd HD Maxtor 120 Gig
2nd cd-rom
Nvidia GeForce 4200 128 MB
larger power supply

With the stock Dell case I am starting to see heat-related issues. I bought a decent case PC Power & cooling, & would like to swap the entire contents of the Dell over to the new case. The 1 thing I missed was that Dell uses a "soft" type of power switch, rather than a plain mechanical style. There`s a small circuit board behind the power switch in the Dell`s front panel-- and a small ribbon cable running from that to the motherboard, with smaller connectors (less than 20-pins). None of these are labelled (naturally) So I don`t have a clue whih pin does what. All I want is to be able to power up, & maybe hook up the HD write LED.

Can anyone suggest a reasonably safe method for tracking down these connectors without frying anything??
The connectors form the power switch in the new case are all labelled--so that`s no problem. I`m no tech, but I`m not afraid to try... worst I can do is buy a new mobo, right??

 

[franklin97355]

Have you tried going to the dell site and looking for documents?

 

[edfair]

Anything coming from the M/B is resistor protected. So the only problem is figuring out which are the power on and reset switch inputs.
I would normally tell you to short pins till something started up, but that tends to get people sued.
With a VOM you should be able to trace the power on thru the board to the input pins.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[AP81]

You shouldn't need the dell power switch set-up. You can just use the power/reset/power-led/HDD-led connectors on the new case.

 

[artharjar]

AP81 is right. you don't need the old dell connector. what you should do though is take off the front panel on the old case if trace each set of wires from the led or button in question to their respective placing on the 20 pin thing you mentioned this will tell you where on the headers that led or button needs to be plugged in. with that info you can hook up the led's and buttons from the new case. even better would be to carefully remove the wires from the plug and on the old dell case and then put the wires from the new case in the same order. this sounds confusing but what you would get in the end is the same 20 or so pin plug on the new case and could just plug it into the dell board. if you won't fallow what i am saying let me know i might be able to clarify.

 

[ih8bills]

Thanks to all for your tips-- I will continue monitoring this site until I actually make the switch. Should be the within the next 2-3 days. I`ll post my results. I`m afraid I had no luck at Dell support. Their diagrams/ articles are too general --not enough detail to try something like this... <sigh> Wish me luck!