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How to power the entire cabinet on..
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Abomination:

--- Quote from: Skippydzg on October 12, 2005, 03:38:13 pm ---So how exactly does this smart power strip work? Does it automatically power everything on, or what? Do I ever need to do anything other than turn the power strip on to get everything going?

As for the other offered solution, where do I find out how and where to do the external power button thing? Getting a button or switch to do it wouldn't be hard at all, but I don't know even where to start when it comes to connecting it to the motherboard. I'm basically looking for a way to extend the power button so it can be mounted somewhere on the cab, making it so you don't have to open up the cabinet to turn things on.

--- End quote ---

The smart strip has one spot that is power always on (for your PC) that also acts as a switch.  You then plug the rest of your stuff, monitor, marquee light, subwoofer ect into the switched plugs.  When you turn your PC on or off the powerstrip see's the extra drain and then supplys power to the other plugs, very sweet setup for me.
MameMaster!:
you can't miss with Kevin's review....between my bits strip and recently installed arcade button on the top of the cab (hacked into PC powerswitch....SUPER easy to do!)......this is the perfect solution....

http://www.retroblast.com/video.html

....the bits strip video is towards the bottom of his video list.

ENJOY!
MameMaster! tm
elvis:

--- Quote from: Skippydzg on October 12, 2005, 03:38:13 pm ---As for the other offered solution, where do I find out how and where to do the external power button thing? Getting a button or switch to do it wouldn't be hard at all, but I don't know even where to start when it comes to connecting it to the motherboard. I'm basically looking for a way to extend the power button so it can be mounted somewhere on the cab, making it so you don't have to open up the cabinet to turn things on.

--- End quote ---

If you have an ATX motherboard and powersupply (which you will if you purchased your machine in the last 5 years) open the system and follow the power-on switch and wires to where they connect to the motherboard.

ATX uses a "momentary on" switch (not an ON/OFF switch like the old AT power supplies).  This is handy, because arcade buttons just happen to also be "momentary on" switch.  You can easily cut your ATX power on switch wires and connect them to an arcade button (or any other momentary switch which you can buy from electrical component sales stores for a dollar or less).  Then have this on the outside of your cab somewhere.

The beauty of ATX is that if you press your power switch while the computer is running (and if your OS is ATX/ACPI aware) it will initiate a software shutdown of the machine.  This works under Mac, Linux and Windows.  I use this method on my cocktail cab (running Slackware Linux).  Push the button to power up, and when I'm finished playing push it again to do a clean software-driven shutdown.
SeanCyrusTowel:

--- Quote from: elvis on October 12, 2005, 10:17:13 pm ---
The beauty of ATX is that if you press your power switch while the computer is running (and if your OS is ATX/ACPI aware) it will initiate a software shutdown of the machine.
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Elfman:

--- Quote from: elvis on October 12, 2005, 10:17:13 pm ---
ATX uses a "momentary on" switch (not an ON/OFF switch like the old AT power supplies).
--- End quote ---
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