Chapter 1: Introduction

notify the user of certain system events. For example, you can also configure Supero Doctor to provide you with warnings when the system temperature, CPU temperatures, voltages and fan speeds go beyond a pre-defined range.

1-5 ACPI Features

ACPI stands for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface. The ACPI specifica- tion defines a flexible and abstract hardware interface that provides a standard way to integrate power management features throughout a PC system, including its hardware, operating system and application software. This enables the system to automatically turn on and off peripherals such as CD-ROMs, network cards, hard disk drives and printers.

In addition to enabling operating system-directed power management, ACPI provides a generic system event mechanism for Plug and Play and an operating system-independent interface for configuration control. ACPI leverages the Plug and Play BIOS data structures while providing a processor architecture-independent implementation that is compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003 Operating Systems.

Slow Blinking LED for Suspend-State Indicator

When the CPU goes into a suspend state, the chassis power LED will start blinking to indicate that the CPU is in suspend mode. When the user presses any key, the CPU will wake-up and the LED will automatically stop blinking and remain on.

Main Switch Override Mechanism

When an ATX power supply is used, the power button can function as a system suspend button to make the system enter a SoftOff state. The monitor will be suspended, and the hard drive will spin down. Pressing the power button again will cause the whole system to wake-up. During the SoftOff state, the ATX power supply provides power to keep the required circuitry in the system "alive". In case the system malfunctions and you want to turn off the power, just press and hold the power button for 4 seconds. This option can be set in the Power section of the BIOS Setup routine.

External Modem Ring-On

Wake-up events can be triggered by a device such as the external modem ringing when the system is in the SoftOff state. Note that external modem ring-on can only be used with an ATX 2.01 (or above) compliant power supply.

Wake-On-LAN (WOL)

Wake-On-LAN is defined as the ability of a management application to remotely power up a computer that is powered off. Remote PC setup, up-dates and asset tracking can occur after hours and on weekends so that daily LAN traffic is kept to a minimum and users are not interrupted. The motherboard has a 3-pin header

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SUPER MICRO Computer X7DBi+ Acpi Features, Slow Blinking LED for Suspend-State Indicator, Main Switch Override Mechanism