Extending the power button on Inspiron 530

[tjansx]

I have a MAME Arcade cabinet built, and now I'm putting on the finishing touches. I'd like to add a power button to the outside of the cabinet so that I can turn it on and shut it off without opening the cabinet.

I purchased an extra arcade button with a cherry switch. It has 3 leads:

NO - normally open
NC - normally closed
Common

Normally in wiring MAME controls, you connect the NO to an ipac keyboard controller, and connect the common to a ground on the ipac.

Now, onto my computer setup...the Dell Inspiron 530 has a power switch that has two wires going into it, a blue and a brown. I've learned that this is essentially the same wire and when you press the power button, it closes the circuit connecting brown to blue and passes the signal to the motherboard to power it up.

What I want to do is extend that button to my new arcade button mounted outside of the cabinet. A friend told me I could just tap into the existing blue and brown wires, and wire one to the NO lead, and one to the Common lead. Whichever color wire goes where wouldn't matter. Then when the button is pushed, the common and the NO would be a completed circuit and allow the signal to pass.

I want to make sure that this is actually correct, as I'm a complete electrical noob, and what seems weird to me is the notion of connecting one wire to the common ground and one to the NO. In the PC scenario, it's fine because there's no ground, it's just completing a circuit for the one wire. But, in a normal arcade wiring setup, if you hook the ground to common and the power wire to the NO, wouldn't you in effect be completing a circuit with a positive and a negative touching each other when you pushed the button, which is a bad thing?

Is it not a true ground? Can someone explain to me like I'm 15 how this all works?

P.S. Sorry for the lengthy explanation, but I wanted to be clear in how I was asking my question...

[ttsgeb]

Yes, you want to hook up one to NO and one to common. What this does is allows the switch to act the same way as the Momentary (or NO) button for power on your laptop, being open whenever it's not being presses, blocking the circuit, and closing when you press it so as to complete the circuit, allowing the signal to pass, just as your friend said.