>Does anyone know what prevented older computers from doing this? Your master power switch was actually just that, a master power switch within the power suppl

>Does anyone know what prevented older computers from doing this? Your master power switch was actually just that, a master power switch within the power supply. Your computer was shocked to life by having this switch turned on, and your computer was turned off by literally having this turned off. It was just easier to design around this. Also bios functionality was incredibly limited at the time, normally being configured via DIP switches on board and hardware control via OS was a long way off, typically the only hardware control was to assign interrupts and handle them.