Simulate real power button

S

spfolly

Bit poster
I don't know if this is on the cards, but I thought it would be good if the 'Stop' button could simulate a real power button - i.e. power off if pressed for more than 4 seconds and shutdown (or perhaps standby) if momentarily pressed. Of course, this is assuming your VM is running Windows. (I don't know if Linux handles the power button in the same way?)

Regards,
Steve.
 
This would have to wait until full ACPI support to be implemented. In old machines bios like parallels emulates, the power button was a hard-switch which completely killed power to the motherboard when pressed. The computer has no way of knowing how/when the button is pressed so that it can behave differently.

--b
 
Actually, the power button functionality came with the ATX power supplies which have been around for many years. The power button as a switch went out with the AT power supplies.

Mark Twain has been quoted as saying "What gets you into trouble ain't what you don't know. It's what you know that ain't so."
 
spfolly said:
I don't know if this is on the cards, but I thought it would be good if the 'Stop' button could simulate a real power button - i.e. power off if pressed for more than 4 seconds and shutdown (or perhaps standby) if momentarily pressed. Of course, this is assuming your VM is running Windows. (I don't know if Linux handles the power button in the same way?)
Click to expand...

This is only a bios issue, and not OS dependent. It would be a totally unique in the world of mouse clicking to time how long the button is held down. Standby doesn't have much meaning on non-laptop systems. The Suspend function is the same functionality with different labeling, and is already there in Parallels.
 
True... sorta.

While it is true that AT power supplies went away slightly before ACPI became standard, they basically happened at the same time. Very few OS supported APM, and those that did did so poorly. It was quickly abandoned for ACPI, which is only available with ATX power supplies.

In any case, Parallels does not emulate a power supply, so AT or ATX is irrelevant. It emulates a bios, and the bios they use is not ACPI compliant at this point. They do have some hacks in place to lie to Vista so Vista believes it is running on an ACPI-Compliant computer though...
 
Delphyne said:
They do have some hacks in place to lie to Vista so Vista believes it is running on an ACPI-Compliant computer though...
Click to expand...

Grumble - I'd rather they get the damn ACPI support in there that hack after hack. Right now, lack of ACPI blocks:
  • Proper Vista support
  • Linux shutdown/halt capability
  • Restoring Windows backups from ACPI systems (i.e. any modern system)

Instead we have Vista hacks and have to use repair installs, "transporter", and other hacks to get real machines into Parallels, instead of just restoring a backup.
 
Agreed. I imagine there was some technical problem with emulating ACPI that they couldn't get around for the 2.x release. I'm not sure what that would be, but I can't imagine they'd make a conscious decision to leave it out. That's all just speculation though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top