Powering the pc off and on

**Holden__V8** · 02-23-2002, 09:14 PM

Hey people i just wanted to know how do you people turn your pc's off like do u have a switch inside the cabin of the car so you can flick it off and on or do u just like open the boot and turn it off and on. I just wanted to know because i am about to put all my mp3 player into my car and the inverter and pc will be in the boot of a sedan. Could i just wire up a switch of some sort to kill the power just before the inverter. Also i wanna hook the power up to the 8 guage wire i am running for my amp. Should this be ok.
Oh yeah also if i shut down the pc will the inverter still drain any power just sitting there and roughly how manny amp's and watts would a p100 with a 100 watt power suply suck. Sorry about all the questions.

**MP3DUB** · 02-23-2002, 10:03 PM

I think the majority of the people fall into one of 3 categories. Either they have extended their at/atx switch into the cabin (which is what I do). Or they use a start up/shut down controller (made by people on this board). Or they wire the power of the inverter to the acc of the car, and have the computer set to power on on power failure. The inverter will still draw a load, minimal as it probably will be, with the computer off. Most also have battery rundown protection, so it will turn itself off if the battery gets too low (not good for the battery, ie don't use it this way all the time). And you might/should be able to get away with a 150w inverter.

**Aaron Cake** · 02-24-2002, 11:40 AM

I have a simple power switch which turns on and off the player via a relay connected to the DC-DC supply. This lets me run the player independantly of the car. I have no shutdown controller, simply a "shutdown" button on my keypad. I hit that button, wait a few seconds, then kill the power to the player.

Connecting your inverter to your 8 gauge amp wire should be fine, as long as you keep things properly grounded to limit noise.

It would be better to switch on and off the inverter, not the PC. Even an idling inverter draws some power.

P.S. All these topic have been covered many times before.

**jamachine** · 02-24-2002, 07:22 PM

This is going to go on here for a bit, but it works on the five computers I have tried it on.First thing go get 2, 2n7000 transistors,2,5meg resistors,2,220uf caps,and 1,5uf cap,and 2, 12 volt relays and one board mounted db9 connector.Now go get some battery backup software,if you want try this before you get the above parts,after you install the software take a db9 male-female cable tell the software what com port to use go into the software and tell it to shutdown in one second after it is on battery,and to start shutdown of computer after one second.Now after you have done that short the center two pins of the four pin row(ya I should know the pin numbers of those but I dont,use a paper clip it works and do this only at your own risk I tried it on 5 different boards and it worked fine for me).It should say on the screen on battery the second you short them,now with this you should go into the bios and tell it to start on its own after a power failure,the way this works it wont matter when you get back to your car if it is shutting down or not it will start right back up on its own after it sees those 2 wires not crossed and the power is backup on the board,I will post the schematic as soon as I get my scanner back up,it really is simple,I was going to wait and post this after I saw that I cannot add the schematic but I allready typed it all out so give me a bit to post it

**magnetik** · 02-24-2002, 10:03 PM

jamachine , sounds interesting... would like to see that circuit when you can.....

I do the same as Aaron with this one. Also I have my BIOS set to 'power up my machine after power failure'. When the inverter kicks in, the ATX PSU powers up and the mobo thinks power has been restored... and the PC turns on. Saves me having to worry about the soft power switch (which I used to use).

Having the inverter running all the time would not be nice to the battery...

safer to have it cut out completely using a relay... (a horn relay works great, ~ 30A at 12volts)

**Holden__V8** · 02-24-2002, 11:36 PM

Thanks for all the info guys. Hey magnetik your idea sounds fairley good and easy to set up so i might do it like that. I got a 140 watt inverter from jaycar finally and all i gota do is stick it all in now. Man your mp3 car player sounds like a good setup i might have to have a look at it one day.
Thanks