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How To: A Cheap & Simple 1 Button Power Up/Down
simplygriff:
I have mine set up the same way right now while it's sitting on my dining room table but I don't want to have to reach inside my cabinet to turn the machine on. I and it seems a lot of people are looking for a simple way to turn on the whole cabinet from the outside.
-G
SoundDoc:
I agree, your method of powering a machine up is the simplest, and most likely cheapest method there is to control a cab. Some peoples MB's don't have the ability to turn on after power failure, or don't want to crash their OS by just turning the power off to their computer. There are just as many ways that people would like their cab to be turned on/off, and just as many solutions, each person just has to find the one that works for them.
Personally on my cab, I'm just going to remote a momentary button to where the current power switch is, and wire it to the power button header on my mb. I'm also going to use a 12vdc ssr I scrounged (out of a broken tv I got for the tube to fix my arcade monitor) to turn on everything else.
The only reason I prefer this is I still only have 1 button, it cost nothing (maybe MY way is the cheapest... ;)) and the most important is that if my kids playing the cab, and just walks away from it, power management will hibernate it after 30 mins of no use, saving me a few bucks on the power bill.
To each is own.
Woudln't it also be a good idea to take all these different and great ideas and examples and put them into a sticky or something?
I also agree that there have just been a TON of messages asking basically the same thing: "how can I turn my computer/cab on/off?" making up a faq of all them might help people out.
sd
Chris:
I use a relay on my strip. The power button on top of the cab goes to the motherboard power button. When I want to shut down, I press the power button; Windows detects this and does a clean shutdown, and the whole cabinet powers off when the motherboard goes off. Since my main cabinet users are kids, I knew I would never be able to get them to do a two-step "Exit the front-end and then power down".
Unfortunately, not all front ends allow a power-down in this fashion... :(
REBIRTH:
--- Quote from: simplygriff on June 17, 2004, 11:43:51 am ---I want to clarify something because I think this is the way I'm going to go. Basically you're re-locating the power switch of the surge protector. So if I just turned off the surge protector/power strip after shut down I should in theory be able to just turn the strip back on and the pc should boot. Is this right? Sounds pretty simple if that is the case.
--- End quote ---
Yes, correct
REBIRTH:
--- Quote from: SoundDoc on June 17, 2004, 04:10:15 pm ---I agree, your method of powering a machine up is the simplest, and most likely cheapest method there is to control a cab. Some peoples MB's don't have the ability to turn on after power failure, or don't want to crash their OS by just turning the power off to their computer.
sd
--- End quote ---
(1) I agree not all motherboards have the power managerment feature, but almost all Windows PC's do have it in one way or another (called different things, but do the same function).
(2) As for crashing the OS - using my method, the windows OS shuts down normally - read my post again.... most front ends will put your Windows through a correct/normal "shut down", and if your front end doesn't, there are a ton of small utilities you can download for free that you can "attach" to your front end so when that front end stops running (when you exit it), it will automatically shut down windows normally.