Automatically Start Box without BIOS

arew264 · 03-06-2006, 07:47 PM

I have an old Gateway Kadoka motherboard that I would like to have start up automatically in the mornings. The box is running CentOS and the bios has no option for automatic startup (this isn't one of those old mobo's that has to be turned off by hand, it turns off itself). Is there a way to do this?

slantoflight · 03-06-2006, 10:42 PM

You could take apart an alarm clock apart then attach the wires that normally run to the speaker an attach them to the power/reset button.

peter_89 · 03-07-2006, 07:41 AM

That's a good idea, actually.
The hard part would be cracking open the alarm clock. I'm looking at mine, it doesn't have any screws or anything...

enine · 03-07-2006, 08:07 AM

Without BIOS?

Does this support anything like wake on lan? Any flash bios upgrade for it?

arew264 · 03-07-2006, 08:23 AM

Thats something I'm looking at. A BIOS flash that provided this functionality would be great, but I have to find the bios flash first. The whole alarm clock thing is beyond me, but my question is that since most alarm clocks I have seen beep over and over when the alarm goes off, so why wouldn't this turn the computer on and off multiple times? That is beyond what I think I can do anyway, but just curious. Wake on Lan, I'll have to check too, but I don't think it has it. I do have another motherboard that would upgrade me from that Gateway, and all I need for it is RAM, but I don't know if I can put it in without having to reinstall linux. I think it'll work because it's all 32 bit but I'll see.

EDIT: I found a flash at http://support.gateway.com/support/d...&param=4000594
I'll check it out.

funkatron · 03-07-2006, 03:41 PM

I don't know if you have the option on your bios but some have an option to turn the computer on when the power is disconnected and then connected again later (eg if you have a powercut the computer will turn on when power comes back on). You could set this to on and get a plug timer to turn the power on when you want.

slantoflight · 03-07-2006, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by arew264

. The whole alarm clock thing is beyond me, but my question is that since most alarm clocks I have seen beep over and over when the alarm goes off, so why wouldn't this turn the computer on and off multiple times? That is beyond what I think I can do anyway, but just curious.

Thats why its generally better to build your own, but what you can do is replace the regular alarm clock on/off switch with a relay. You attach the alarm speaker wire to a low voltage relay thats soldered to the on/off switch.

The idea is that since on/off switch usually turns off the alarm. So you get relay with the default position of on until the alarm sounds, so the alarm is a self-quieting alarm. But still a very cheap and gaurrunteed solution.

arew264 · 03-08-2006, 10:15 AM

Well, I like the idea of the power setting. My BIOS has the options to either go to the previous state after a power loss or to stay shut down. If I can find a way to get it to halt the system without shutting down, I could have it do that, have a timer turn it off, and then have the timer turn it on in the morning (this is just a regular wall timer for chrismas lights, etc). How could I keep init from turning off the power?