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What is "Remote Power Connector" on AT motherboard?

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First post, by eesz34

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I have a FIC PA-2005 and one of the front panel headers is a 2 pin "remote power switch". What is that for considering an AT power supply cannot turn itself off?

There's another header on it near the IDE ports:

Remote Power Supply Connector: RPW_CON
This 3-pin male connector allows you to enable (or disable) the system power
if the RPW_SW is on (or off).

I've never seen this on an AT motherboard, but I've been away from it for awhile. Google isn't of much help.

Reply 1 of 2, by BitWrangler

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There was a period when Energy Star/ "Green" PC standards made their way into some AT stuff, probably around 94-97ish, where things behaved halfass ATXy if all components supported it. So need "green" mobo, "green" CPU and "green" PSU so sleep/wake and soft power on/off work right.

edit: Article from 1995, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12 … 008-0012-5#Sec1 might give you some buzzwords to spot on packaging and labelling if you want to make the attempt to get a bunch of parts working together for sleep/soft power. (Spoiler they won't 🤣 ... I'm kinda cynical about soft power working right, it still scrambled your hdd one time in 50 into the 2000s.)

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 2 of 2, by eesz34

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BitWrangler wrote on 2022-07-14, 19:38:

There was a period when Energy Star/ "Green" PC standards made their way into some AT stuff, probably around 94-97ish, where things behaved halfass ATXy if all components supported it. So need "green" mobo, "green" CPU and "green" PSU so sleep/wake and soft power on/off work right.

edit: Article from 1995, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12 … 008-0012-5#Sec1 might give you some buzzwords to spot on packaging and labelling if you want to make the attempt to get a bunch of parts working together for sleep/soft power. (Spoiler they won't 🤣 ... I'm kinda cynical about soft power working right, it still scrambled your hdd one time in 50 into the 2000s.)

Ok interesting. Nah I'll leave that disconnected. I was just curious what that was supposed to be. I really doubt my PS supports it anyway since I see no way for it to be signalled as such. Probably would have a separate small cable coming out of it.

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