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How to shutdown

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cdbrown:

--- Quote ---I will be looking to use a more dedicated front end in the next couple of days though....
Probably Raging Dragon or Arcade FX. Especially as Hot Keyboard isn't Freeware.
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Have now downloaded Raging Dragon and noticed it has the shutdown function in the dragon.ini file :).  Now just have to learn how to use it properly.
-cdbrown

Howard_Casto:

--- Quote ---
"If you are using Windows and want to shut the sytem down use the file rundll32.exe similar to the following (c:\windows\rundll32.exe user,exitwindows)."

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I wish this still worked or else I wouldn't have had to write all this goofy code for rd....  In an NT-based environment this old trick won't work as they're are various security procedures to kill.  If I ever find a non-code based solution for nt/2000/xp I'll post it though.  It's like 4 case statments and 12-20 calls of windows proceses to do it now.

Skeleton:
I've given this topic a lot of consideration and I've come up with a pretty good solution for my MAGMA project. What I wanted was a one button power-on / power-off that shut windows down in a nice way at any time, whether you are in the frontend or in the middle of a game. You could just hook a button up to the PC power button. This turns it on and you can configure it to shut down this way too, but it is not an unconditional shutdown. If you are in the middle of a game an ugly popup window will appear telling you that you must exit the game before shutting down.
  I solved this problem with a momentary pushbutton and a DPDT 12V Relay. The pushbutton is wired across both common terminals of the relay. The NC contacts are wired across the power button of the PC. The NO contacts are wired to a KE72 input. The Relay coil is wired to 12V from the PC power supply. When the system is off the pushbutton is essentially connected to the PC power button. This allows you to turn it on. As soon as power comes on the relay activates and the pushbutton is then connected across the KE72 input. In windows I created a shortcut that has a Hotkey combination like Ctrl-Alt-K (be careful that there is no way you can activate whatever hotkey combo you choose while playing MAME). This shortcut points to an unconditional shutdown program (you can find this on the web). The KE72 input is programmed to send this Hotkey combination when the pushbutton is pressed. This allows the same pushbutton to power off the machine in a nice controlled, windows-friendly way even if you are in the middle of playing a game.
  For people that have IPAC's this solution doesn't work since it can't send a macro to activate the shortcut. Since my next machine will likely have an IPAC I am working on a different solution. I'm thinking about hooking the NO contacts of the relay to something like the RingIndicator line on a serial port and creating a VB program that performs an unconditional shutdown on a RingIndicator event running in the background. I still have to work on this though.
  This can power up the whole cabinet. You just need to switch the AC power to your powerstrip that powers the rest of the cabinet with a 12V Relay that is powered by the 12V from the PC power supply. Just make sure it can handle 120VAC at enough current (I would estimate that 10A would be a minimum rating).
  I still need to update my website with this info so I don't have to keep re-typing it every time someone asks this question. Hope this helps someone.

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