[SGVLUG] Calling the brightest of cal tech and other nerds!

[Dustin Laurence]

On Sat, Dec 23, 2006 at 09:52:27AM -0800, Tom Emerson wrote:
> 
> Dustin Laurence wrote:
> > 
> > To cut even more to the chase, part of the question is "why is this
> > acting differently than other machines?"  I don't recall ever hearing of
> > other machines rebooting under similar conditions.
> 
> Actually, I believe he said it "shuts down", NOT "reboot", but that's
> only a matter of semantics.

No, it's a matter of me misremembering.

> in the lightning-fast pace of computer evolution, you might not have
> noticed that for the last three or four years or so, computers don't
> have "the big red switch" anymore --

Um, I have the same computers, so I noticed. :-)

My point was that just about every suggestion any of us have come up
with founders on the fact that if it were valid, plenty of other people
would be reporting the same problem.  I've not heard of it, and nobody
else has said they've had it, so there is some missing factor nobody has
hit upon.  This is true no matter whether the motherboard has a soft
switch or not.

> Instead, the (supposed) "power" switch is a soft-switch that goes to the
> MOTHERBOARD, not the POWER SUPPLY, and essentially generates a signal on
> some trace/line related to the PSU which (as John K. surmised) tells it
> to turn off (or on, as the case may be)

> my guess, similar to the magic/more-magic switch(*), is that touching
> the case does indeed cause a "signal" to be induced on the "power
> supply" line to the MB, which in turn instructs the system to shut off.

Sure, I assume the same thing.  But it doesn't change the fact that
we're all speculating on things that would, logically, affect lots of
other people.  So we're not making progress unless one of those
suggestions leads to figuring out what is different here.

>  I /suspect/ you can mitigate this somewhat by changing the BIOS such
> that the "power switch" needs to be held for 4 seconds before shutting
> off (similar to many laptops)

Hmm.  That's a very good idea, the best so far.  It doesn't solve the
problem, but might work around it very well.  If it doesn't, that would
indicate that it's more than just telling the motherboard to shut down.

> (*) I'm impressed, Dustin -- you've related that story a few times at
> the after-after meeting (streetside on Lake...) but never knew it had
> been committed to an actual website...

I'm pleased that I tell it well enough that it wasn't obvious that it
came from the New Hacker's Dictionary....

Dustin

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