There has to be a dozen "how do you power up/down with 1 button" threads going on right now. It is an interesting question everyone has when building a cab. I sure did. Everyone has a different way of doing it and most of them include either a fairly expensive "smartstrip" power strip and/or some building of relays or soldering stuff to your motherboard, etc.... I've asked the question in some of these posts about what I am missing because what I did is so incredibly simple and cheap, I have no idea why someone would do it differently. Some people are doing it my way, but it seems like most are not. I am conviced that this will work for 99% of the people out there using a Window PC to run their Mame.... I hate to start a new thread and will understand if the moderator kills it, but my posts in the other threads have gone for the most part unanswered, so I figured let me explain exactly what I did in a new thread - maybe it will help some people. Obviously you should always be careful with electricity - so be careful (even though this is very easy).
First a quick explaination as to how you turn on/off my Mame machine:
Turn on - walk up, hit 1 button.
Turn off - Get out of the front end, which in turn shuts down Windows properly, and then hit that 1 button.
I assume this is what people want to do. If so, read on. How I did it:
Parts:(1) I used a standard everyday power strip with everything in my cab plugged into it. Any old powerstrip will do, heck - a $1 extension cord will work - I used a $5 powerstrip since it had some surge protection in it.
(2) a standard on/off pushbutton switch (not a temporary contact switch, it is always on or off). I bough mine at Home Depot for $5. You could do without a switch if your powerstrip has a switch on it and you want to hack that. But I went with a $5 switch. This is a similar one (this one only costs $1.50!):
What to do(1) That on/off pushbutton switch has two wiring posts underneath it (well mine does, the picture above has two pair, similar idea). The powerstrip cord has two wires in it (sometimes 3, the third being the ground wire). All I did was cut 1 of the power wires (not ground) in the the power strip cord in the middle, connected either end of the cut wire to each wiring post on the button. Like a house light switch, this switch just sits in the middle of the electrical flow and either allows the flow to go through (button "on") or stops the flow (button "off"). I installed the button on the top of my cab.
That's is
all the electrical work I did, cut 1 wire and hook it to two posts.
(2) This part I have to assume is the "trick" that most people do not know about and then go through the hassle of soldering stuff to the motherboard, set up relays, etc? Anyway, on the PC, turn on your
power management settings in the BIOS (or CMOS). What this does is boot up your PC any time power is turned on. This is different than hitting the power button on the PC, which I do not have to do - it boots your PC up when power is applied to it. As an example, what this esentially does is if you power down your PC and then unplugged it from the wall, when you plug it back into the wall later the PC will automatically boot back up without having to hit the power button. When I hit my on/off power button I installed on the cab it is as if I just plugged it back into the wall in my example and it will boot right up. 99% of all CMOS' can do this. The real purpose for this in a PC is some people want the PC to boot up just by touching the keyboard or mouse - this power management is what can allow this to happen.... but as a side, MAME benefit, it also boots up the PC when power is applied to it.
How to turn on the power management - this is where I can give you an example, but many CMOS' are different, you'll have to find out how to get into it and change it on your PC. Another warning, you can mess up your PC if you change the wrong thing in the CMOS, so make sure all you touch is the power management. Most computers will open up the CMOS if you hit the "delete" key as you first boot up the PC (sometimes it is the "escape" or "F1" keys). The CMOS/BIOS will open up. Same here, all CMOS/BIOS are different - but most have a "Power" section. In there you will see the "power management" settings (it may be termed a bit differently in yours). It is almost always set to "off" as a default, just turn it on, save the CMOS/BIOS setting and reboot. This may sound confusing, but it is really a 5 second procedure.
- The monitor, marquee light, etc. all powers on/off normally.
How to use it(1) Cabinet off... walk up and hit the button. Everything powers on, the PC boots up. If you have your front end in your "startup" folder, your frontend will start right up too and you are good to go.
(2) After you are done playing, get out of your front end. Now "most" front ends have a setting in it to do a normal Windows shutdown when you exit the front end (most of the ones I have tried do have that feature, I actually use Emulaxian). If you front end doesn't have that feature, you can download a simple windows utility that will do that for you when you exit the frontend (if you search the internet you can find a ton of them... here is one, not sure how well it works -
http://www.jaredshelp.com/Downloads-req-viewdownload-cid-1.html. Once windows shuts down normally, just hit that 1 power button to turn everything else off.
So again, you walk up - hit the button once and everything powers/boots up. Done playing, get out of the front end, windows shuts down, hit button and you are done.
Hope this helps someone.
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Topic: How To: A Cheap & Simple 1 Button Power Up/Down (Read 3748 times)
