Possible to auto power-on T61 after prolonged power failure?

[portsample]

Is it possible to auto power-on a T61 after a prolonged power failure?
I've checked in the BIOS settings, and nothing jumps out at me as a possible solution.

We've got an application at a remote site where a laptop would be used to collect and store data. However the power sometimes fails for hours or days, and we'd need the laptop to reboot on such occasions.

Thanks.

[TuuS]

Not exactly as far as I know, but it is possible to have your laptop sleep when it loses AC power then wake when it detects the LAN, so in theory you may be able to get it to wake when your router powers on. This may require ethernet connection rather than wifi and to be honest, I've never experimented with this. Also, if your battery isn't strong enough to survive the downtime the machine will power off, but it doesn't require a lot of battery for it to sleep. My guess is with a strong battery that a day would be no problem, I'm not sure about two or more days, maybe someone else here knows how long a laptop can sleep with a strong 9cell battery before it goes critical and shuts down.

[portsample]

Interesting- thanks. I'd noticed the "wake from sleep on LAN" BIOS option as well. This system would be a remote video monitoring set-up. There would be no need for a LAN on this system.

[TuuS]

So it's not connected to the internet at all? Well, you could still connect it to a router, you can probably find a used ethernet router for $10, even if it's only task is to wake up the laptop. One thing I'm unclear about is if a signal needs to be sent such as someone trying to connect to it, or if the routers power up "handshake" would be enough. I guess it would require some testing or someone that's actually used this option and understands exactly how it works.

You may find the best option to be an old desktop, one that doesn't have any advanced power options and has a hard on/off switch. I guess it really depends if such a machine could handle the software you want to run.

[portsample]

Nope, no internet, no people...only salmon and bears. Years back we'd used desktops hardwired to remain on, however power consumption issues caused problems during prolonged periods of no sun/wind.

[jdrou]

Or just buy/build a big UPS. The biggest off-the-shelf units from APC seem to run 13-14 hours with a 50W load and a laptop is probably only half that load or less for your usage.

25W for 5 days would be 3000 Wh which would be roughly equivalent to 5 marine deep-cycle batteries. Probably less; deep cycle batteries are normally rated with a 25A load and with a lighter load their Wh rating is probably higher.

[portsample]

UPS are BIG power draw items when they are charging. They'd easily max out supply during this period.

[jdrou]

Note that my X201 does have a BIOS option for this in the power settings: "Power On with AC Attach".
Double check to see if that exists on your T61. Might be worth considering getting a slightly newer system if this is critical.

[jcvjcvjcvjcv]

I suppose the T61 has the equivalent of the ATX connector pin 17?

Length of sleep (S3) before the battery is empty depends mostly on memory energy use.

[portsample]

Note that my X201 does have a BIOS option for this in the power settings: "Power On with AC Attach".

Now THAT is very interesting. Has anyone here ever tinkered with making a custom BIOS?

[RealBlackStuff]

This comes to mind: My Digital Life with LENOVO (IBM) Bioses, especially Thinkpad.
That thread alone has ONLY 580 pages with modified BIOSes...
For the T61 series there's Middleton, who has been mentioned in this forum at least 500 times...

[TuuS]

Now THAT is very interesting. Has anyone here ever tinkered with making a custom BIOS?

I don't think it would be possible to mod the bios to create an option unless the hardware was originally designed to support it. Something like the SATA2 mod introduced by "middleton" was only possible because the boards controller was originally designed to support SATA2, but was disabled by Lenovo because it wasn't needed at the time. If there is support for a power-on when AC is present option in the hardware, then it may be possible, but I think it's unlikely.

I'm also wondering how you could confirm (remotely) that the system is up and running if you have no networking. It seems like you'd need to physically go there to confirm it's working even if you were able to sort this out. It's a shame you can't get this system online so you can connect remotely and check up on the condition of the battery and charging system. Other thoughts have crossed my mind such as a "Rube Goldberg" type machine to physically turn on the laptop with a phone call. If you could figure a way to have the presence of AC voltage release a latch and allow a lever to physically press the power button. Rigging something that automatically resets itself would be a challenge, but I'm sure it can be done. It would be even easier if you could modify an old keyboard by attaching a pair of wires that would represent the power on circuit. In this case you'd only need a way for an incoming phone call to momentarily close the circuit and boot up the laptop. I think a simple relay wired to a telephone (land or cell phone). I think it could be setup with little cost, but without a method of confirming the status you'd be working blind.

Going slightly off topic, if you are talking about the system in your signature running a T7700, you can reduce power consumption by going with a T8100 cpu. I'd also consider removing your optical drive and using an SSD drive. The wifi card can be removed (or disabled) too, and power off all other unneeded options in bios. The screen too can be disabled. Assuming with this being alaska, the need to run the cooling fan can be minimized too due to the cold climate. For such a system Intel graphics should be used, you'd have no need for powerful graphics.

This could be an interesting project, but if there is another thinkpad model that has the option already, it may be futile to invest a lot of time into such modifications.

[rkawakami]

If this were something that I would have to throw together, I'd solve it like this:

- Get an Advanced Mini-Dock (2504-10U). Open it up and locate the terminals for the power pushbutton. Figure out which terminals need to be shorted together to turn the laptop on, attach wires and bring it out of the dock.
- Alternately, if I didn't mind hacking the T61's keyboard, see if it's possible to get to the contacts of the power switch. However, given the need to get a couple of wires out of the laptop/keyboard, it's probably easier to do this on the dock.
- Build a "power-on, one-shot" circuit. This would most likely be built around a 555 timer IC configured as a monostable multivibrator. The purpose of this circuit would be to provide the signal to turn on the laptop when power to the circuit is applied. Usually the 555 IC is powered by a battery, but in this case a small wall AC-to-DC transformer would be needed. It would need to have a small reed relay and a switching transistor connected to the output pin of the 555 (instead of the typical LED in these types of demo circuits).
- Tie the relay outputs from the 555 circuit to the power switch of the dock (or keyboard).
- Do to possible timing issues in exactly when power is re-applied to each piece of gear, it might take a pair of 555s: one configured as a short delay timer (pauses a second or two after power is applied) before triggering a second 555 which does the actual "push of the power button".

ref: http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/showt ... hp?t=64555 (Self-triggering monostable 555 circuit; need to be a member to view referenced .PNG image. The 2.4 second pulse would need to be shortened to around 1 second. That can be done by changing capacitor C1 from 100uF to 47uF.)
ref: http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/wav ... timer.html (Driving a relay using output of 555)

I know it's probably not what you have in mind but it is one solution.

[91011]

"Power On with AC Attach"

Like WOL, this feature only works if the machine experienced a soft shutdown.
If the laptop shuts down from a power dump or an exhausted battery it won't restart when AC resumes or a magic packet is received.
Tested on a x201s and would guess the x200 BIOS has the same feature.

Perhaps there is a way to initiate a soft shutdown when AC is lost?
In Windows the command: C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 300
would do a soft shutdown in five minutes but have no idea how to make it run when AC dumps.

[TuuS]

I don't think getting it to shut down, sleep or hibernate would be a problem, the power saver features can do that by making it enter sleep mode then enter hibernate if the AC power isn't restored soon.

I really like rkawakami's solution

The mini-dock option would prevent any need to hack the laptop, but if you need a keyboard to hack I'll send you one for the cost of postage, it won't look pretty, but should get the job done. Connecting wires to the contacts would probably require a conductive epoxy since the last time I dissected a keyboard there was nothing suitable that can be soldered to, just plastic with copper coating.

I'd rate it as "doable", but it wouldn't be pretty. Probably the easiest way would be enter from the top by removing the power button and separate the layers with an exacto knife then attach the wires.

The part I can't get straight in my mind is how you are going to know when the computer needs to be restarted, and how you are going to be sure you are infact restarting it, not shutting it down. Perhaps there is a way to remap the keyboard so the power button won't shut the laptop off under any circumstances then you can put a simple timer on it so every so many hours the circuit is closed, then "if" it's powered off, it will boot up, if it's already running, it will ignore the circuit. If there is no software available to do that, it could probably be handled with a bios edit.

Actually now that I think about it, windows seven (perhaps others) already has the option to "do nothing" when the power button is pushed, so the button will boot up when off but do nothing at all when depressed. Now all you would need is a basic timer switch to close the circuit every few hours.

Good Luck, and forgive my uncoordinated "thinking outloud" thought process.

[portsample]

Thanks for the insightful suggestions and possible solutions.
I suspect that a soft shutdown if "AC is off" would be an easy script to write, then a start-up would be initiated at "AC on" if the Thinkpad is an X200.
It it were a T61, would it be possible to just have a "stub router" connected to the laptop that powers up at AC on? Any idea if that would initiate boot-up via the stock BIOS? Thanks again.

[91011]

With the stock BIOS your router would have to send a WOL magic packet to the T61 that was in a soft shutdown.
It appears that a router running DD-WRT firmware can do that.
I suppose with the right script it could do it when powering up.

Look at the last post: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 120#602120

[jdrou]

I suspect that a soft shutdown if "AC is off" would be an easy script to write, then a start-up would be initiated at "AC on" if the Thinkpad is an X200.

Shouldn't even need a script in Windows; the power-mgmt app has 2 "alarms" that can be set at specific battery thresholds and you can set it to just shut down when battery reaches 10% or something instead of the default sleep/suspend.
If you're running linux I expect there is a similar mechanism available which I suppose could require scripting.
Of course this doesn't help unless you get a system that supports the automatic power on function or set up a way to trigger WoL.

[RealBlackStuff]

This guy Marko Oette produces the excellent WOL2 program (probably the best).
http://www.oette.info/
In the Menu bar, click on "Projects" and then on WAKE ON LAN 2