A8N-SLI Deluxe: Why is my PS/2 Intellimouse Explorer mouse always on even when the PC is off?

  • Thread starter Thread starter tecknotot
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T

tecknotot

Can anyone help me and answer this? My last motherboard, my mouse
light was not always on when my PC was OFF and with this new one, I
noticed that its always on.

Thanks!
 
tecknotot said:
Can anyone help me and answer this? My last motherboard, my mouse
light was not always on when my PC was OFF and with this new one, I
noticed that its always on.
Click to expand...

Possibly the new one has a wake-up event for the mouse; the old one didn't?

Ben
 
Ben,

This may seem silly, but did you have an AT style motherboard prior to
this new motherboard? The reason this is happening is that when you
used to shut off your old system, the motherboard lost all power. ATX
style motherboards continue to let some juice flow through them, so long
that they are plugged into the wall. This allows you to enable wake on
LAN, keyboard or mouse (depending on the options in the BIOS). ATX also
doesn't have to rely on a battery to keep BIOS settings and the time.

Also possible, early versions motherboards sporting USB ports often had
under voltage problems to the USB interface. Some manufacturers got
around this but editing the BIOS to completely shut down the USB interface.

Hope this helps,
Tim
 
Tim said:
Ben,

This may seem silly, but did you have an AT style motherboard prior to
this new motherboard?
Click to expand...

You sure you're supposed to be addressing me and not the OP?
The reason this is happening is that when you
used to shut off your old system, the motherboard lost all power. ATX
style motherboards continue to let some juice flow through them, so
long that they are plugged into the wall. This allows you to enable
wake on LAN, keyboard or mouse (depending on the options in the
BIOS). ATX also doesn't have to rely on a battery to keep BIOS
settings and the time.
Click to expand...

Yeah... such as wake on PS2 mouse... like I suggested.

Ben
 
Can anyone help me and answer this? My last motherboard, my mouse
light was not always on when my PC was OFF and with this new one, I
noticed that its always on.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

In the past, there were three or four headers on the motherboard,
that allowed the user to choose to power PS/2 mouse/keyboard or
USB devices, from either +5V or from +5VSB.

It looks like this is the first Asus motherboard to do away with
those headers. The user manual doesn't have any pictures of the
layout, so I cannot check and see if there is room on the
motherboard for the three pin header or not. (The designer could
have placed the header pads/holes on the board, and then
manufacturing removed the pins.)

Based on your observation, it seems your ports are being powered
by +5VSB. This is fine, as long as the ATX power supply has enough
current to run all the devices connected from +5VSB. This could
be a problem, for example, if the USB ports are powered by
+5VSB, and you use bus powered USB scanners or ADSL modems. In
a case like that, with enough 500mA USB device loads, you might
manage to overload the +5VSB output. And, without headers on the
board (they would be labelled USBPWxxx or the like) to choose
powering from +5V, you would need to use an external powered hub
to solve the powering issue.

(I hope Asus gets a clue, and puts the color pictures of the
motherboard back in the manual, as the picture helps in diagnosing
problems like this.)

As far as I know, Asus is not smart enough to make the powering
choice switchable in hardware. It could be done, but would cost
a few bucks. Removing the USBPWxxx headers from the
motherboard probably saved Asus a whole $0.10 per board.
A big win for their finances :-(

HTH,
Paul
 
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