Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 12:50:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Jim Shankland <jas@flyingfox.com> To: hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: ATX boards and restart after power failure Message-ID: <199810121950.MAA15990@biggusdiskus.flyingfox.com>
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I know this has come up before, but I haven't found the discussion in the archives. We have been building systems based on the Tyan S1572 motherboard (ATX form factor, TX chipset). It turns out that when there's a power failure, these systems stay down when power returns until a human or other mammal presses the soft power-on button on the front. Furthermore, *this "feature" cannot be disabled*. (On the equivalent Asus board, the TX97-X, there's a BIOS option -- "AC Pwr Loss Restart" -- to disable the "feature".) Now, I'm as much of a fan of power management as the next person, but the mind-numbing stupidity of deliberately building a system that can't be restarted without human intervention after a power failure has me speechless (well, nearly). Maybe FreeBSD and Linux are barely blips on these people's radar screens; but have they ever heard of Windows NT? Or even Windows 95 users who want their machines to pick up FAX calls around the clock? Anyway, enough ranting. My questions are: * Is this likely to be a BIOS configuration item that, for whatever reason, was deliberately omitted from the configuration screen? I.e., is there a software-only solution to this problem (either we poke the CMOS by hand, or look for a BIOS update)? * Somebody (I think on this list) actually made a hardware mod to their boxes to simulate "mammal pushed soft-power-on button" when power came up. If that person or anyone else has any thoughts on how to go about this, I'd like to hear them. * I'd love to hear more about which ATX Socket 7 boards are similarly damaged. So far, the data points I have are: -- Asus TX97-X: OK -- Tyan S1572: BROKEN -- Asus P5A: BROKEN? (was told, haven't seen this myself) The P5A is particularly disturbing, as it's the successor to the TX97-X, with the Aladdin chipset. If this is true, then Asus is making negative progress. Thanks in advance for any information. Jim Shankland Flying Fox Computer Systems, Inc. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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