laptop use with juke.

[ptpeter]

Hi,

      I'm pretty knowledgeable about arcades since I first visited this site over a year ago, but there are still a few things I don't know how to do. I'm looking to build a slim jukebox cabinet (I have a 15 inch touch screen) with a 4 year old dell laptop (its plenty fast). My concern is that I don't want to have to open the cabinet every time to boot up the laptop.. Is there a way so I can snap my fingers or push a button and magically the laptop will power up? This is obviously because I will have my laptop closed while its in the cabinet.
Thanks for the help in advance.

Peter

[tristan]

Most laptops use a momentary switch like a desktop to turn on. If your soldering skills are good you could remove the panel above the keyboard (most dells have a similar panel layout/config) and solder some wires to each pin of the switch and run them to a button. Then if you needed to reverse it later, you could either desolder or just cut off the wires and replace the panel. The only real issue is that those switches are generally pretty small and you may need to remove the circuit board and solder to the bottom. Also, some laptops refuse to boot while the lid is closed, but most Dells I've seen will work while closed in a docking station. Worst case, you would have to remove the pin switch that senses the lid being closed.

[speshialk]

The laptop has a battery, so why not just never turn it off?  If there's a short power outage, the laptop will just keep running.  Just get some remote management software and you'll never have to open the box.

[richms]

Power consumption is a good reason to want to turn it off.

I cant even wake my thinkpad up from an external keyboard or mouse like my desktops, so I am condemned to opening it and mashing the non responsive most of the time power button to turn it on. Wont do wake on lan and the usb ports are powered down when its off so no joy there for anything waking it up.

If there is a serial port you could try some wake on ring hackery.