When I was younger I had a computer where the front fell off and stripped the wires from the button.
To turn it on and off I had to hold the wires together, felt like I was hot wiring a car every time.
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2025
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Perfect prelude to playing GTA
Wasn't this built so the front wouldn't fall off?
When I bench tested components at a PC shop, I’d use my smallest screwdriver to short the pins on the motherboard to start up the caseless computer.
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It’s also how we accidentally shut them down before saving our work
Now that’s my cat’s job. Never again will I buy a case with a top mounted power button.
I had to disconnect power button from mobo because my room mate's cat would just shut it off, luckily I had a case whose side panel was very easy to open with a hinge, so I tied two cables near the latch and to turn it in, I'd turn the latch open the case, quickly short the cables and close the panel and latch.
Thanks for reminding me of that. Also I swear that cat knew what I did and kept trying to open the latch for a few months before giving up.
Same with me but I have a toddler. Windows has a power button setting that I switched to do nothing when pressed.
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She knows the power she holds.
You could install a second power switch inline with the first. If both are momentary contact then you’d have to press both at the same time to turn it on(or hold one, etc).
I’ve never actually needed on of these but they keep showing up in movies/games…so I’d vote this. Toggle it on then press the normal button. You could leave it on to keep the regular button working or toggle it off and disable it.
We used to call those missile switches. Probably still do
Ed. A search on my local electronic components shop's site returned nothing on a search, but scrolling the 211 items in category "switches" found a missile switch cover (to suit toggle switches) as #86, so yes, we still do
Ed the second. Thingiverse shows many printable missile switch covers for diverse switch types
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ctl-alt-defeet
Kids these days with their 5% overclocks.
Back in my day we had 100% overclocks!
Turbo bumped my 8MHz 386 to sixteen megahertz
It never got switched off, except in some games that a slower CPU made easier (some games back then ran just as fast as the hardware could run them, expecting the computers or turn to be the state of the art) By the time of the machine in the picture unturbo wasn't enough so we used a TSR* program called goSlow to get specific performance
*Terminate, Stay Resident; a program that could run in the background
Run in the background? Look at you with your fancy multitasking OS
It was the wondrous system "DOS 6.2"
Doesn't that require Extended memory? I don't think that's going to catch on
It did, extended memory came about the same time we needed to show down the system
66 MILES PER HOUR!
You might have meant it as a joke but just in case someone else isn't aware, this button actually made your CPU slower 🤓
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Still do.
Yeah, did other people's computers stop having power buttons or something?
Mine would require an impressive feet of lifting my legs above my desk
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And also how you sometimes accidentally turned it off in the middle of an intense Quake 3 session.
I remember Macintosh computers from circa 1990. Even then Apple loved to just remove buttons because they hate buttons. Because it was so perfectly intuitive to drag a disc icon over to the fucking trash can icon in order to eject the floppy disc, they didn't have a physical eject button for the floppy drive. Helpfully, they instead put the power button right where a floppy drive eject button should have been. So I was constantly turning the computer off whenever I wanted to eject a disc.
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Yeah, that's how I do it every morning.
Sometimes, when the ol' 'puter is cranky, I have to press the reset button, which is really small, and it's difficult to hit it with my toe (I have to do some tricky nail work, not for beginners), but I'll be damned if I ever reach down and use my fingers.
mine was an actual heavy-ass switch. it felt like shutting down the power of an entire neighborhood.
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Still do.
Its a matter of principle.
I remember our family computer having an actual switch instead of a button.
Still did the toe thing though, down for on and up for off.
Has something changed?
Smaller power buttons and often on top rather than in front. Also feel like hard and clicky is more popular than soft and linear now
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Nine times out of ten I'd hit the turbo button and then spend half an hour wondering why the family computer was running slowly...
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