Replacing broken ribbon cable

[Nharveyasus]

I'm making a little basic NAS out of a dead laptop, and one of the parts that I found broken was the ribbon cable that runs from the power switch to the main board. It's an 8-pin. I have a couple spare 12-pin ribbons, but I doubt there's any use for them here.

My question is this:
Is there a way to hack a 12-pin by removing 4 of the pins from the ribbon to then be usable in the place of the broken 8-pin. (I think I know the answer, just want to know if there's anyone who knows more about ribbon cable here)
Failing that, will any 8-pin ribbon cable that fits the connector work, or am I going to need to hunt for the specific cable?

Thanks for any input, also, no idea if this is the right board for this.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

It's not unusual for manufacturers to use off the shelf components, so finding that a standard ribbon cable is compatible shouldn't be too surprising.

Provided the machine originally used a straight-through ribbon cable, I don't see why there should be any issues. I rather doubt the cable is carrying any significant load and needs to be of a particular wire gauge. If the laptop is otherwise dead, it hardly hurts to tinker around.