Zotac Ion: No Support for Wake on USB
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 25, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Anand
In response to our first article on the first mini-ITX motherboard based on NVIDIA's Ion platform, many of you asked enough questions that warranted a follow up. In said follow up I mentioned that wake-on-USB did not seem to work reliably on Zotac's Ion motherboard. Today I've got confirmation, said feature does not work.
Zotac says that wake-on-USB isn't currently supported by the PCB and requires a hardware revision to enable it. A new revision of the Zotac Ion board with wake-on-USB support is in the works and Zotac tells me that the new board should be ready in early June.
Zotac also tells me that the Ion user manual should be the first place to look to see if your version of the board supports wake-on-USB. Given that none of the boards support it currently, don't expect to see any reference to the feature in the current version of the manual :)
As always, I'll keep you posted. But for now, back to testing some new CPUs :)
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richgarry - Tuesday, January 12, 2010 - link
Glad I found your blog. I will be a regular reader!SEO Services India
know of fence - Thursday, May 28, 2009 - link
My netbook has no Wake-on-USB, under stand-by mode, which really is a minor issue. Furthermore I can still send it to stand-by per USB remote and instantly turn off main power to save stand-by energy for Monitor, PC and all the peripherals. If people care about energy (cost) conservation they will want to go all the way. (1W stand-by is about 2$ a year)Is it possible (by now) to send a PC to stand-by and turn of main power?
I guess not, which would make Notebooks the best and greenest HTPCs.
Or maybe it's possible to compensate this flaw with a uninterruptible power supply (UPS)?
cjb110 - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 - link
Looking at this issue from another angle...is this a case of poorly written or incomplete specifications?Shouldn't the creators of USB included this requirement in the specifications?
ChuckECheese - Monday, May 25, 2009 - link
Put another slot in there for a Bluetooth radio!icrf - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 - link
Get a case like below for it, then just use a USB BT device.http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-en...">http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-en...
kmmatney - Monday, May 25, 2009 - link
I don't see this is beinga big deal. I'm assuming you can still getout of standby by using the power button (how I normally do it anyways). The bad thing about wake on USB is that I've seen computers wake up from inadvertent mouse movements, which can be annoying. I have wake on USB turned off on my desktop computer and just use the power button. I guess you can use a PS2 keyboard as well (alhtough those may be harder to get these days).icrf - Tuesday, May 26, 2009 - link
I think a lot of people were looking at this board for an HTPC, where a USB remote would be the sole method of interaction with the system.FaaR - Monday, May 25, 2009 - link
If they're going to fix the wake-on-usb feature I sure hope they solder on an ATX power connector on the board as well.Seeing Atom in a more regular desktop format is refreshing, but being locked in by proprietary power bricks is unfortunately rather stale, and won't help this new flavor of PC to grow.
sprockkets - Monday, May 25, 2009 - link
It isn't. You can buy 240/120 to 12v bricks anywhere. Logic Supply sells them, or mini-box. Think pico power supply, without needing the pico part of it.Besides, you can always buy the normal ATX version of the same board.
If you were into these kind of systems like I am, you would see that having the 12v directly to the board is something the embedded market goes for. Even Intel now has an Atom board that does this.
kmmatney - Monday, May 25, 2009 - link
There is nothing too proprietary about this power supply, as you can see here:http://hothardware.com/image_popup.aspx?image=big_...">http://hothardware.com/image_popup.aspx...-ion-12....
It looks to have the same specs as my dell laptop power supply, which you can buy on Ebay for cheap. The motherboard has DC-to-DC circuitry that will allow it to take a small range of input voltages (just like any laptop will).