automatic power on possible?

Most modern motherboards supports the timer based automatic power on
via BIOS settings. With linuxbios this is not(?) possible. There is a program
for linux, called nvram-wakeup, to set the wakeup time in nvram or rtc. But
especially for the K7SEM or EPIA boards a reboot is needed after it, so the
wakeup settings can take effect.
Does anyone know what the BIOS is doing what linuxbios does not?
Perhaps it can be done in a program?

Thanks

Thomas Wehrspann

 writes:
> Most modern motherboards supports the timer based automatic power on
> via BIOS settings. With linuxbios this is not(?) possible. There is a program
> for linux, called nvram-wakeup, to set the wakeup time in nvram or rtc. But
> especially for the K7SEM or EPIA boards a reboot is needed after it, so the
> wakeup settings can take effect.
> Does anyone know what the BIOS is doing what linuxbios does not?
> Perhaps it can be done in a program?

I believe it is just a matter of programming some real-time clock registers
so an alarm will go off at a specified time, and setting up the
appropriate southbridge or superio bits so that the board will wake up
when the alarm is triggered.  I doubt it even requires BIOS support at
all.  Though that can't hurt.

Eric