In reply to your message of Sat, 21 Aug 2004 13:15:12 EDT:

| >If memory serves, it was common in that era of Mac to be able to depress the
| >power button and then rotate it into a locked position. I'm 100% certain
| >this was the case for all Quadra machines
| 
| Your 100% certainty is misplaced.
| 
| It was only used on Quadras that required it. Other Quadras supported 
| a "soft" method of performing the same function, which is what is 
| used in all PowerMacs that will run NetBSD.
 
Ah. I suspect this is a case of my remembering the functionality being
present in the Quadra machines, but it having a different mechanism
depending on the model. I know for certain that the Quadra 700 (and it's IIci
predecessor), the Quadra 800, and at least the first year of IIsi machines
had the rotatable power button-- use of those models was a requirement
for the Apple Internet Router servers I installed a plethora of back in
those days. :-) (As was Macsbug with an "auto-reboot" config... ;-)

| >, and I'm 80% certain that feature
| >was continued into the first series of PowerMacs which reused many of
| >the same FRUs as the Quadras.
| 
| None of the first series of PowerMacs can run NetBSD (no 
| OpenFirmware, no PCI bus, PowerPC 601 processors, all 3 of which must 
| be changed to run NetBSD) and it has the same caveat as the Quadras.

I was considering the power button issue sans NetBSD compatibility,
but the lack thereof is surely a salient point...

| The option to boot after power failure is a PRAM setting on many 
| Macs. I don't know if there are OF commands to set that feature, but 
| if you have the ability to boot into MacOS, you can set it using the 
| Energy Saver control panel. Click the "advanced" tab, and tick the 
| checkbox next to "restart automatically after a power failure" (OS9's 
| Energy Saver...OS7 & 8 had slightly different wording iirc, but the 
| option is still there on all machines that support it). This does 
| require a good PRAM battery.

What information is to be had on these topics from Apple's increasingly
emasculated on-line help can be found here:

Desktop Macintosh: Power, Reset and Interrupt Buttons
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14117

Energy Saving Control Panels: Description and Compatibility
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=18127

YMMV,
	Paul

                              Paul Frommeyer
             Work         Internet Engineer, CCIE               Play
     Senior Network Engineer                          Network Sorcerer At Large
   Deskey Integrated Branding                            Paul's Fone Company
     pfrommeyer@deskey.com                                corwin@palas.com
          *** Speaking solely for myself unless otherwise noted ***