Ideal shutdown button questions. Win XP crt cab.

[burn_654]

Hi there! I'm wondering what people are using to create idiot-proof shutdown procedures for their cabs. Basically I'm looking for a practically kid friendly button (probably down near my coin door or under my control panel) that will exit the frontend or game and shutdown the pc and crt monitor. Some details:

-I'm running a crt over crt_emudriver so that needs to shut off completely when the pc does. The typical answer seems to be a smart strip here with the pc as the 'sensing' device - any cheap recommendations?

-I'm using Mala but am entertaining the thought of using Attract Mode (if that factors into shutdown.)

-Should I wire my master power button to the PC power motherboard headers? Can I get enough of a complete shutdown using that header (ie, no windows popup dialogs, using Windows XP) or can I key that to an Autohotkey script?

-I have a couple spare button inputs on my jpac - is there a better shutdown solution/script using a 'keyboard' key?

What have you guys and gals come up with?

[BadMouth]

Mala has the option to shut down.
If you hit the exit button while in the game selection screen, it will ask you if you want to shut down.
Press whatever button you have mapped to select and the pc will shut down.
That's how I do it anyway.

I have wished there was an option to map a button other than the same one used to exit games.
Some of my friends' bratty kids who just blindly pound on the buttons have managed to shut it down and then come bug me to start it back up.
I haven't let them play on my new cab. 

[pbj]

I have wished there was an option to map a button other than the same one used to exit games.

Couldn't you just map the MAME exit to something besides Escape, and then only have your Shutdown button wired to your Escape input...?

[BadMouth]

I have wished there was an option to map a button other than the same one used to exit games.

Couldn't you just map the MAME exit to something besides Escape, and then only have your Shutdown button wired to your Escape input...?

I suppose I could map the exit game button in Mala to something else. 
On my last setup I was using Mala's built in hotkey features to shut down other emulators, but everything on my current machine is ran through the MAME menu.
As long as focus returns to Mala, I don't see why it wouldn't work.
For all the crazy workarounds I'm doing in Mala, I can't believe I never thought of that.
Thanks.

[burn_654]

Mala has the option to shut down.
If you hit the exit button while in the game selection screen, it will ask you if you want to shut down.
Press whatever button you have mapped to select and the pc will shut down.
That's how I do it anyway.

That's not a bad solution. How do you turn the pc back on BadMouth?

Thinking in that direction, for a button to do both shutdown and startup duties...
It would almost have to be wired to the mobo, right? Maybe I could wire a physical button to a jpac input for the Mala exit/shutdown key, and the pc power button simultaneously, and hard disable all power button functions inside of windows. (via registry or something.) With the logic being that the button should turn on the pc from a cold boot and then act as an exit/shutdown button once it's booted...

[BadMouth]

Mala has the option to shut down.
If you hit the exit button while in the game selection screen, it will ask you if you want to shut down.
Press whatever button you have mapped to select and the pc will shut down.
That's how I do it anyway.

That's not a bad solution. How do you turn the pc back on BadMouth?

Thinking in that direction, for a button to do both shutdown and startup duties...
It would almost have to be wired to the mobo, right? Maybe I could wire a physical button to a jpac input for the Mala exit/shutdown key, and the pc power button simultaneously, and hard disable all power button functions inside of windows. (via registry or something.) With the logic being that the button should turn on the pc from a cold boot and then act as an exit/shutdown button once it's booted...

To start up I have a button wired to the start button headers on the motherboard.
It's located on the top of the machine where original cabs would have had a switch to turn them on.

[Howard_Casto]

You asked about an all in one switch for your monitor as well.  Go to the hardware store and buy an outlet, a receptacle box to put it in and a cheap face plate to cover it all up.  Go to your junk drawer and pull out a spare 3 prong pc power cable.  Go on ebay and order  a 5 or 12 volt relay, some diodes (or better yet a relay module) and a pc power supply 4 wire "hard drive" cable. 

I won't place a diagram here for fear that I would make a mistake and burn your house down but basically you wire the relay to the outlet you bought and switch it on and off via a cable going to your pc's power supply connected to a hard drive power connector.  It costs a few bucks in parts and can be assembled in an hour or less.  When you turn your pc on, anything connected to that outlet will turn on.  It's easy as pie to do, BUT if you aren't comfortable with wiring, particularly working with ac voltage, just stick to the smart strip.

Back to the pc.....  by default, when you tap a pc power button it boots and once in windows if you tap it again the pc safely shuts down.  That is by far the easiest way BUT you have to check and see if your frontend of choice is "shut down aware".  If it's coded properly it'll run a function to save things when the pc shuts down.  The annoying issue you'll run into is that mame and many other emulators are NOT shut down aware. 

Also windows does a hard shut down when you hold the power button down for 2 seconds so you might want to turn that off in settings.

[behrmr]

I think a button somewhere other than the CP is the best. The couple I did I put a momentary rocker switch on the back or top of the cabinet where you'd find it in a lot of real arcade games then wired that to the motherboard header as mentioned.  You can also set the shutdown setting in windows to forcibly close applications that don't respond in (n) milliseconds.  If you want an easy "shut down everything" get a smart outlet and make your PC the "master" and everything else "controlled".  When the strip detects that the master is no longer drawing current, it turns off the other outlets. 

[Howard_Casto]

Honestly your kids shouldn't be turning it on and off.  It may not look like a pc, but it still is and as you are probably aware just randomly shutting down any old way isn't a good thing to do to a pc.  So yeah, on the top or somewhere out of kiddies reach is best.