Stage 23: When It Comes to Cabinet Power, You Must Strip It

Bonus points to all of you who sang the title of this post in your head. In a world of confusion and uncertainty, one thing remains clear: we need more DEVO.

But my title is both acoustically pleasing and versatile: I recently stumbled across something that will help me solve my dilemma as to how to properly power the cabinet and all it's associated devices.

In its current semi-functional state, the cabinet takes a few moments to turn on. There's the actual MAME PC, the monitor, the speakers and eventually the marquee lamp and likely some extra fans in the base of the structure. That's a lot of switching on to do, and obviously doing it all in one fell swoop would be preferred.

Enter The SmartStrip, a powerbar that appears uniquely tailored for just my needs.

The SmartStrip is like your average powerbar: surge protection, angled-plug, spaced outlets, etc. But with one important difference - the Control Outlet.

What the Control Outlet does is simple yet important: when something that is plugged into the Control Outlet is turned on, the SmartStrip delivers power to all the other outlets and anything that is plugged into them.

So if I have all my gear plugged into this bad boy and have my PC plugged into the Control Outlet, when I turn my PC on everything else will spring to life, presuming it was all left in an "on" state, which clearly I will ensure.

Once this is all in place, the next step will be to find a way to start up my PC at a distance, likely via something like the Ignition 1 PC Power Switch, although this particular model appears to be in large demand and short supply.

Still if there's one thing the Interweb has taught me (outside of the fact that it's comprised mainly of a series of tubes) is that if it exists I can likely find it online for sale. Or maybe I'll just get funky and wire up some extension to my existing power switch. Or ask someone who knows how to do this for me.

The SmartStrip has been ordered and is apparently winging its way towards me from Pennsylvania or wherever. Maybe when it gets here I will finally summon the motivation to rewire the marquee light?