[DJ Schuby]

I pulled a motherboard from an HP Pavilion XT963 and the tower was thrown out before I removed the power switch. Yesterday I went to Microcenter with my motherboard and I purchased a rocker switch. The guy who helped me said that the switch would work as long as I could figure out how to wire everything. Unfortunatly I have had no luck finding out anything about the xt963's power switch online, except that I can order one on the hp website for $81. That's increadibly overpriced if you ask me, and I'd much rather learn the proper way to wire this in myself. I have access to all the tools and equiptment I will need, I just need to know what wires go where. I have two pictures posted here. One is a picture of where the switch plugs into the motherboard, the other is of the switch I purchased. Today I found out that the switch I purchased from microcenter won't work, as I have an ATX style motherboard and that a rocker switch will basically make my computer shut down after 3 seconds. I guess I need to get some type of pole switch? Any feedback on what I should do, or how to wire this thing up would be greatly appreciated. I have a picture of the part of my motherboard where the switch plugs into.



Thanks for your help!

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Welcone to Geeks to Go, D J Schuby!

There are AT style switches available but they are the type that is power on with one click and power off with the second click. I think you have the ATX momentarily-on type switch like these.

http://www.directron.../atxswitch.html

You have 3 pins on the PWR. 2 pins are for power and the third pin is for a light that shows the computer is turned on. It will not hurt the computer to have the wrong pins connected. The computer just won't boot. I would choose the pins closest to the edge of the MB for the power pins. You can still connect a light but will have to double up on one pin( 2 wires going to the same pin) to have the light work.

HDD pins is for a light that shows HD activity.
DC and Sleep pins i would just disreguard.

SRX660

Edited by SRX660, 09 December 2006 - 06:44 PM.

[SRX660]

Welcone to Geeks to Go, D J Schuby!

There are AT style switches available but they are the type that is power on with one click and power off with the second click. I think you have the ATX momentarily-on type switch like these.

http://www.directron.../atxswitch.html

You have 3 pins on the PWR. 2 pins are for power and the third pin is for a light that shows the computer is turned on. It will not hurt the computer to have the wrong pins connected. The computer just won't boot. I would choose the pins closest to the edge of the MB for the power pins. You can still connect a light but will have to double up on one pin( 2 wires going to the same pin) to have the light work.

HDD pins is for a light that shows HD activity.
DC and Sleep pins i would just disreguard.

SRX660

Edited by SRX660, 09 December 2006 - 06:44 PM.

[DJ Schuby]

Thank you for your help. I'm gonna get the switch rigged up sometime tomorrow.

[DJ Schuby]

Just got everything rigged up now finally, but when I hit the button to turn the power on, nothing happened. The green light on my PSU didn't even come on except for a split second. I tried again and a litle bit of smoke came up from somewhere inside the tower. I am now suspicious of my mobo being fried, when it was perfectly fine before. So uhh, what do I do now?

[DJ Schuby]

Just got everything rigged up now finally, but when I hit the button to turn the power on, nothing happened. The green light on my PSU didn't even come on except for a split second. I tried again and a litle bit of smoke came up from somewhere inside the tower. I am now suspicious of my mobo being fried, when it was perfectly fine before. So uhh, what do I do now?

[wannabe1]

when I hit the button to turn the power on, nothing happened. The green light on my PSU didn't even come on except for a split second. I tried again and a litle bit of smoke came up from somewhere inside the tower.

Time for a new motherboard.

HP boards are proprietary and as such, have non standard front panel bus wiring. You wire one of these up backwards and apply power, something's going to give. If you saw smoke...the board is probably toast.

Get a new board with a standard front panel bus and connect it using the documentation that comes with the board. And use the switch installed in the case...not a Radio Shack special.

wannabe1

[SRX660]

Now you have already stated that smoke was coming from inside when you hooked your computer up. What you did not say was what type of power switch you used to try starting the computer. The smoke statement says things were not right and the motherboard has probably been damaged. If i am correct your system is a Intel Pentium 3 - 1.2Gig socket 370 with a Intel 810E motherboard. This computer is considered so old now that the price of fixing it up would be better spent as a part of the price of a new computer. It is too slow for streaming videos, any of the newer games, and much of anything else other than basic internet surfing and word processing. Even finding a new motherboard that can use a pentium 3 processor will be hard to find, thats how obsolete they are. The prices for these old motherboardsis about the same as new motherboards. Another thing is you may have fried the CPU so even a new MB is not going to help.

I personally would not continue trying to get this computer running.

BUT, just in case you feel the need to keep trying you can look here for another Mb that may fit.

http://www.ascendtec...=MB3CPQ23256710

or perhaps here.

http://www.gearxs.co...roducts_id=5111

Good luck with the project.

SRX660