Like when you’re restarting your computer or console.
You have it make itself turn off and on again, how does it turn itself back on after being turned off?
In: Technology
The computer is actually a collection of several small computers working together. Mostly we just think about the one that runs programs.
But there is also another small computer that deals with power management. This is especially true in laptops, because they need a small computer to manage charging the battery. THIS small computer is technically always on.
So when you shut down your computer, the OS knows how to talk to this small computer. Once the OS has cleaned up all its mess and tucked itself in, it sends a signal that means “please shut down”. Then the computer in charge of power stops providing power to most of the components of the rest of the computer.
Or, for a restart, it may shut off the power for a short time then turn it back on again. Sometimes that process doesn’t really involve turning things off. It just involves a slightly different computer that’s in charge of “warming up” the hardware and getting the OS ready to run. If the OS tells that thing to start over and do its checklist from the beginning, it looks like the computer was shut off and turned back on even if the power hasn’t been removed.
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