Boot up PC on keypress?

[Biff Byford]

Saint's book refers to configuring your computer so it'll boot up on keypress. I want to enable this feature, so my kids can just walk up to the arcade game, hit a button, wait a few minutes, and play.

I've been all over my settings and looked on Google but can't figure out how to do this. Help?

[gprime]

On some motherboards in the bios you can find the option to start up on "space". Not sure about the rest

Here's a terrible screen shot, but this is where you should look. In most ASUS boards its under "power"

screen shot

[pointdablame]

a lot of motherboards also have power on by keypress (any key, not specific) and power on by mouse.  If you have a trackball, you could use power on by mouse and your cab would turn on every time the trackball was moved.  Some mobos also have power on by lan options, but that probably won't be much help to you in this situation.

[cdbrown]

yeah - it's all mobo and bios dependent.  You might want to check through your mobo manual to see if it has that option.  Also go to the manufacturers website and see if there is an updated bios, sometimes they add the functionality.

[JAMMA Guy]

I wouldn't even go that route ... it's just simplier to re-wire your PC's on/off button to a pushbutton on the control panel (hence you won't need to access the keyboard everytime you need to power it on .... just tap the "POWER" pushbutton and your off and gaming   )

[Goz]

I think the point of the start on any keypress is to start the cabinet without needing to reach in and turn it on and still not have to drill another hole in the cabinet. The start on keypress works perfectly well will pressing any of the arcade buttons already mounted that are hooked up to the keyboard encoder / hack which means no need to wire an additional switch. I have cabs that have an additional switch and a couple of cabs with power on with button press and neither one is really any better than the other. It's just preference.

-Goz

[shadowdrak]

Couldn't you buy a multiple AND gate chip and connect a couple buttons to it that act as another switch.  Is this overkill though?  I don't have much experience with keyboard encoders/hacks, but an AND dip and a circuit board to mount it on should only run a couple of bucks.  Don't know how much you trust your techie skills in this respect though.  Also, i dont know which IC number would be needed.

EDIT:I want to clarify that I mean to make holding a button combonation act as a different switch.  You'd have to be careful about which one you chose though.  If you have a dedicated escape button, i might suggest using it and the player start buttons.

You could also make a more complicated circuit that could do something similar, but it would use some sort of flip-flop to work as a toggle between on and off.  You could make this control your surge strip to turn your entire cab on and off (you could probably hack something together to make your computer power on immediately after it receives power(BIOS options or a delayed switch on a pcb).  This would require its own power though I guess, so it could be more trouble than it is worth(a low ampere wall wart maybe?) on several levels.  I might try to build something of this type in my upcoming first cab but we will see about that.  I'll post it if I get anything together.