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Anyway to power on computer with a key or mouse press?
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SpamMe:
Check you bios. You may have a 'power on ps/2 keyboard' option, or something to that effect. As far as the power strip, look for an option like 'boot after power failure' or something similar.
moloch:
I found an old computer case and ripped out the power button and reset switch wires with the small black pin connnectors still on. I then wired that through a 4 wire molex connector to two arcade buttons. I replaced the power on and reset connectors to the mother board from my case with the ones I had made and now I have 2 real arcade buttons to power on and reset my computer. The molex connector allows me to quickly disconnect the case and pull the computer out of my cabinet just in case.
simplygriff:
There's another idea.  How about just wiring a button to a molex connector like the  original power button and still keeping the original button and wiring intact.  This should be able to keep the warranty intact by not destroying any original parts.

Was this basically what you did moloch?
SoundDoc:
The short answer to your question is No.

Dell motherboards don't support power on from mouse, hotkey, f1, etc... This goes for all Dell motherboards, the Dimension (even the XPS), OptiPlex, and the Precision desktops.

The only options that are supported by the Bios are for power on after AC loss, and for wakeup from Lan.

The only thing I can suggest is as others have, wire onto the powerbutton connection on the motherboard. It wouldn't require modifying your machine, as long as you did it right.

You would need a button, some wire, and a 2 pin connector to swap with that of the cases power switch on the motherboard. You could use a spare cab Pushbutton, some spare wire, and a 2 pin header connector.

Depending on which dell motherboard it is, they usually place the power connection on the far left/front of the pin headers.  Its well marked.
You could even use a old cd-rom audio cable (cut down to 2 pins) in a pinch as a proper plug, but ripping one  out of a junk machine is far easier.
You would just extend the wires up to the button on your cab.
I highly doubt Dell would even blink about this. Its not against warrenty to open your system, and since your not cutting anything, simply swapping a plug, they would never know.

To top it off, a current sensing power bar (don't have the link handy) would power up the rest of your cab when it sensed the pc turn on.

SD

SoundDoc:
Heres a better link to what I was suggesting:
http://joelsgadgets.com/computeronpushbutton.html
and the link I just pulled it from where the same idea was being discussed:
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=19682;start=msg164607#msg164607

sd
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