Extending reset/power pins to a remote location

[Red Squirrel]

I have two PCs, one for my daily use running Linux and a more beefy/power hungry one for gaming running Windows. I like to keep the windows one off unless I want to game so I can save on power and increase UPS run time if power goes out. My idea is to extend the power and reset pins to my workstation, along with the rest of the wiring going up. It would be about 25 feet. Do I need to worry about any interfeerence causing enough voltage to activate the pins? Ex: could my PC randomly get rebooted or reset? Or is there a built in pull up/down resistor in the motherboard that would prevent this?

Basically by extending them that far I'm creating an antenna and they are floating. I know with working in MCUs and such a floating pin will basically flip flop, can the same happen with these pins? If it matters, both PCs will run through a cat 6 cable as that gives me 8 wires which is what I need.

If it will be a problem I can always use relays or transistors that I activate remotely instead, but trying to save effort if I can.

 

[pcgeek11]

In my opinion if you are using Cat 6 cable twisted pairs you should be fine.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I was thinking that too. Guess should I use 1 twisted pair per button. That's probably the most logical way right?

Ordered some toggle and momentary push buttons off ebay. Going to make a small panel where I have to "arm" the button first before I press it, to avoid accidental pressing. Should be neat. I probably could add the power LED to the panel too but then I'd have to run 4 more wires (or at least 3 more) so opted to not bother. Could also have made it digital so it communicates over the wire and have a MCU at both ends, but it will do.

 

[pcgeek11]

I was thinking that too. Guess should I use 1 twisted pair per button. That's probably the most logical way right?

Yes that would be the correct way and should avoid any interference issues.

I would still avoid running it near any high power lines just for peace of mind.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

What's wrong with a "sleep-then-hibernate" configuration for the gamer box?

I set mine to sleep for one hour and then hibernate. That's a custom choice. There shouldn't be much draw off a UPS either way. I think you can even set up some UPS software to "awake" a sleeping machine and then shut it down under a power-outage.

I'll offer a caveat. I'm still troubleshooting a problem that may arise from my UPS with a setting to "allow this device to wake up the computer." One could avoid that complication simply by eliminating sleep altogether and allowing the system to hibernate after some period of no activity -- with the "allow this device" checkbox unselected.

 

[386DX]

If you're running an Intel system that has vPro supported CPU and motherboard you can remotely turn on/off the computer from another computer/phone/tablet.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I don't want to rely on a specific feature that only a specific motherboard will have, this method is universal. I ran the internal wiring/splitter for it and terminal blocks on the back of the cases. I just need to run the ethernet cable up when I get the chance. Waiting for push buttons from ebay so I can make a small panel. If I do get issues then I'll just digitise it and use relays or transistors at the computer.