I saw this while browsing an edition of Computer Power User magazine on the news stand at Wal*Mart. Looks interesting.

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I knew i shouldve patented...... http://forums.pcapex.com/showthread.php?t=24625

Quote: Originally Posted by Sparky I knew i shouldve patented...... http://forums.pcapex.com/showthread.php?t=24625

Uber! I'm actually about to walk out the door to head ot Wal*Mart and plan to pick this up and try this mod.

How hard was it?

3 wires, 3 pins, 3 position switch.....you dont need the magazine to figure that one out. Mind you i wrote that thread almost 2 years ago.

That does seem useful. I hated opening my case up and moving the jumper.

I would put it somewhere on the case though. When I saw in the CPU article that it was a toggle switch on the side of the keyboard, I thought to myself, "I wonder how many times a day I would accidently clear my CMOS with that?"

Quote: Originally Posted by BigAkita I would put it somewhere on the case though. When I saw in the CPU article that it was a toggle switch on the side of the keyboard, I thought to myself, "I wonder how many times a day I would accidently clear my CMOS with that?"

Good point, BA. I mean, it's a useful little mod, but like you say, would be more useful say on a switch panel on the front somewhere or something.

Quote: Originally Posted by Sparky 3 wires, 3 pins, 3 position switch.....you dont need the magazine to figure that one out. Mind you i wrote that thread almost 2 years ago.

Well, I'm not so electrically savvy, so do you have some sort of guide somewhere, or have any other advice on how this would be done?

Here is the full article if anyone wants to finish the read. Sorry, no pics for you...unless you want some requests then I can copy/paste them.

Spike

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ItÂ’s 2 a.m. Eight hours ago the FedEx man dropped off that package you had been eagerly anticipating all week. Without hesitation you opened it like an antsy kid on Christmas morning, reaching inside and pulling out a brand spanking new processor. After spending some time marveling at its complex beauty, you cracked open your case and installed your new power plantafter applying an immaculate layer of high-quality thermal paste, of course. You spent the next few hours running benchmarks, gaming, testing for stability, and smiling from ear to ear. Confident that your new processor was running smoothly, you decided to see what kind of clock-speed headroom it had lurking about and immediately headed into the system BIOS for a little overclocking fun. And then the frustration began.

Your motherboard allegedly has a built-in mechanism for recovering from a failed overclock, but it doesn’t seem to be working properly. Thanks a lot, Murphy. And your timing must be off because the “insert key” trick is about as reliable as a ’72 Ford Pinto that hasn’t had its oil changed since Nixon was in office. It seems every few minutes you’re kneeling on the floor, fumbling through the system for the trusty Clear CMOS jumper. On what must be the 10th trip under your desk, you bump your head, grit your teeth, and mumble angrily, “There has to be an easier way to do this.”

Maybe weÂ’re being a bit dramatic, but we know this is a scenario many of you can relate to. Being a power user sometimes means struggling through frustrating and tedious sequences in an attempt to do something that should be easy, such as overclocking a processor, in our example. Thankfully, there is a simple solution to this problem that can eliminate all the frustration. By incorporating a custom-built Clear CMOS switch into your keyboard, youÂ’ll never have to root around on the floor again should you need to reset your system BIOS after a failed overclock or a night of overzealous tweaking. WeÂ’ll outline the process fo

The Participants

When you move the jumper in your system to the Clear CMOS position, all youÂ’re really doing is making a connection between the appropriate pins in the header. Essentially, all we wanted to do with our project was extend the pins to a convenient location so we donÂ’t have to venture into our systemÂ’s insides to clear the CMOS. While we were at it, we wanted to eliminate that annoying jumper in the process. Incorporating a simple switch into our keyboard and running some wire to the motherboardÂ’s Clear CMOS header would fill the bill nicely.

Before we actually began our project, we pulled together all the parts necessary to complete the mod. After some planning using the KISS method, we decided all we needed was one single-pole, single-throw switch (momentary or not, either will work fine), a length of two-conductor stranded wire about two feet longer than our keyboardÂ’s built-in cable, and a female 2-pin connector that was compatible with our motherboardÂ’s Clear CMOS header. The plan was to build a basic circuit that would short the appropriate pins in the Clear CMOS header when we threw the switch. Luckily, our lab has a plethora of surplus hardware, and we got our hands on all the necessary parts by rummaging through a few random piles. We recycled the switch from a previous mod, took the two-conductor wire from a blown speaker, and salvaged the 2-pin connector from a case intrusion switch that we never used. A 2-pin CD audio cable would have worked just as well.

Get Underway

In addition to the few parts that we collected, we also got an assortment of tools ready to complete the mod. We needed some heat-shrink tubing to clean up and protect any wire splices, some solder, a soldering iron, a few nylon wire ties, a drill, wire strippers, and a Philips-head screwdriver.

Our first task was to cut a length of two-conductor stranded wire that was a couple of feet longer than our keyboardÂ’s cable. YouÂ’ll need enough extra length to be able to feed the wire into the case and then route it neatly to the proper location.

With the wire cut, we stripped a small amount of sheathing from both ends and warmed up our soldering iron. We had to make four solder connections: two at the switch and two on the connector. To solder the wire to the switch, we first separated about two inches of the wire and slid a couple of small pieces of heat-shrink tubing over each end. Then we taped the tiny switch to our workbench to keep it still and held the exposed wire to one of the switchÂ’s tabs with the hot soldering iron. Once the iron was heated, we fed a bit of solder onto the prong, removed the soldering iron, and held the wire in place until the solder was cool and the joint was solid. We repeated the process on the other tab. We then slid the heat-shrink tubing down over the solder joints and heated it until it was securely in place. The heat-shrink tubing will prevent the switchÂ’s prongs from shorting should they bend if the wire gets tugged too aggressively.

We then moved on to the other end of the wire. At the opposite end, we had to splice the 2-pin connector onto the two-conductor wire. We again separated a couple of inches of the wire and slid some heat-shrink tubing over each end. We twisted the exposed wire together until the splice was secure. At that point we soldered each splice and covered the connection with the heat-shrink tubing. When we were done, we soldered the switch to one end of the two-conductor wire and soldered the 2-pin connector to the other end.

After making all the necessary solder connections, we tested the loop for continuity with a multimeter with the switch in the open and closed positions. With the switch in its open position, we should not have had continuity. When closed our meter should have alerted us with a tone that signified the loop was complete. Luckily, our switch was good, and our solder joints were solid because everything worked like a charm on the first attempt.

Assured that our switch and wire assembly was functional, we set out to find a desirable position on our keyboard to integrate the switch. Upon initial inspection the area at the rear of the keyboard adjacent to the cable seemed to have enough clearance to house the switch. We carefully began disassembling the keyboard. If you perform this mod, be very careful during this step. Many keyboards have individual springs for every key, and if you carelessly take the keyboard apart, youÂ’ll find yourself scrambling to round up 104 springs rolling around on your workbench. To disassemble the keyboard, we removed a few screws from its underside and slowly lifted the bottom panel, being very careful not to jostle anything. Once we had the keyboard apart, we confirmed that we had enough clearance for the switch and then drilled a hole to mount the switch using the supplied washer and nut to secure it in place.


With the switch mounted, we routed the wire through the same hole as the keyboard cable and reassembled the keyboard. When the last screw was tightened, we used a nylon wire tie to anchor the conductor wire to the keyboard cable. This will add strength to the assembly and prevent the wire from being accidentally yanked out.


We also placed small wire ties down the rest of the length of the cable to make it appear only one wire was coming out of the keyboard. We then reconnected the keyboard and fed the connector and wire leads from our assembly into our case and routed the wire neatly to the motherboardÂ’s Clear CMOS head

Complete The Job

Because our motherboard had only two pins in the Clear CMOS header, once we were in the system, all we had to do was push the 2-pin connector over the pins to make the proper connection. Most motherboards, however, will have three pins in the header. If this is the case, pins 1 and 2 are usually the Normal position and pins 2 and 3 are the Clear CMOS position. A jumper usually resides on pins 1 and 2, and when moved to pins 2 and 3, the CMOS is cleared and the BIOS settings are reset. Had our motherboard been equipped with three pins, we would have connected the switch assembly to pins 2 and 3. Therefore, when the switch is open, the system would function normally, but when the switch is closed, a connection is made between the pins and the CMOS is cleared. After testing our mod, we put the finishing touches on our build, which included a couple labels that indicate the Normal and Clear CMOS switch positions. The entire process, including rounding up the parts, soldering the wires, mounting the switch, and making the appropriate connections, took only a few hours. This mod, however, is sure to save us time during future overclocking/tweaking adventures.



On a side note, this mod has a lot of other potential; you donÂ’t have to use the switch to clear your CMOS. You could use this mod to power up the system or control a system fan. You donÂ’t have to mount it on the keyboard, either. You could place the switch anywhere. You could also incorporate multiple switches to control multiple parts of the system. We performed this modification to give you the basic concepts necessary to complete it, but with a little more time and creativity, thereÂ’s a plethora of other modding opportunities available. Hmm, perhaps itÂ’s time to whip out some eight-conductor phone wire and connect some stealth power and reset switches and power and IDE LEDs?

by Marco Chiappetta

Quote: Originally Posted by subdismal Good point, BA. I mean, it's a useful little mod, but like you say, would be more useful say on a switch panel on the front somewhere or something. Well, I'm not so electrically savvy, so do you have some sort of guide somewhere, or have any other advice on how this would be done?

Spike Shot put up the article which details the two post solution, I have a basic simple (no pictures but simple diagram) 3 post solution.

Roughly, I'll try to detail it out for you.

The pins on the mobo are set up so the first pin is the ground into your CMOS, the second is the common power and the third is the pin that draws current away so there will be no power going into the CMOS, therefore blanking it out within a few seconds.

So, visually, it would normally be setup like this (the brackets are the jumper. [1 2] 3. So, if you were were shorting it, the jumper would be here 1 [2 3]. Simple setup.

So, you'd get a three post pin doodad (dunno the proper name for it, but that's about all you need to know). Use three different color wires, run one wire from each post. On the switch, you want to solder the wires in the same order, on the same side of the switch. Visually, let's say the pins are numbered on the switch as such:

1 2 3
4 5 6

And the switch happens to be toggled in <--- direction.

You need to make sure you use only one side of the switch (either 1 2 3 OR 4 5 6) and make sure the wire that leads to pin 2, the common power, is in the center post.

So let us say, using the above diagram, I choose to solder the CMOS Ground pin (#1) to pin 1, the power to pin 2 and the drain to pin 3, if you move the toggle to face pin one ( <--- posistion), the CMOS gets the volts, and you keep your info. Moving it to the opposite posistion (--->) is the same as shorting it, and 20 seconds later, the CMOS is dead.

The major things to remember are to ALWAYS put the central pin from the mobo to the central pin on your switch, and that whichever end of the switch that you solder the CMOS voltage wire to is the side that represents a live CMOS.

Hope this helps.

D

Edit: Screwed up, calling the common volt line on the mobo the 'common ground'. Fixed that.

Now all we need is something to automatically change out hardware...

Im bumping this, but for an Idea I have

It useful but, as mentioned before, it has some flaws. Im surprised no one else thought of this. Just add a keyswitch in series with the regular switch! That way , when you want to reset the bios, insert the key, and turn it, Then all you have to do is switch it like normal. This way, you wont be able to reset the bios if you dont have the key in. Sorta like in the movies when a nuke is launched.

Quote: Originally Posted by Nerdz Im bumping this, but for an Idea I have It useful but, as mentioned before, it has some flaws. Im surprised no one else thought of this. Just add a keyswitch in series with the regular switch! That way , when you want to reset the bios, insert the key, and turn it, Then all you have to do is switch it like normal. This way, you wont be able to reset the bios if you dont have the key in. Sorta like in the movies when a nuke is launched.

Anything that has a switch cover is instantly awesome...Even if, it merely controls the LED that lights up the switch cover, it is still friggin' sweet!


Now that is something that is worth so much more in parts than as is....

If your keyboard has enough real estate, you could use one of those toggles with military-esque covers.

Insert key, turn key, flip cover, flip switch, and see your OC disaster disappear.

I guess there's a number of different mechanisms you could use once the wiring is in place.

i'm with big akita on this one..i'm pretty sure that i would end up toggling it while the comp was on...does anyone know what happens if i do try to clear cmon while the comp is on?

almost made the 1 year mark...