> I used a knife to short-circuit the pins as needed
Reminds me of shorting the two power-on pins on an ATX motherboard to start it without a switch installed. Obviously, your setup was far cooler. Nice work.
That lasted a few months for me, until I found a box of the front panel connectors, and I taped together a power/reset and speaker connector. ( I made two, one to use, and one as a spare... ) after not being used for 6 months, It got tossed... of course, only to be needed a few years later for fixing a intermittent motherboard.
Reminds me of shorting the two power-on pins on an ATX motherboard to start it without a switch installed. Obviously, your setup was far cooler. Nice work.