[yitrc]

What is the trick to build or buy an "always on" pc appliance. I want the pc to act as an appliance and always boot up if power is applied. I do not want there to be a "power" button located on the appliance preferably. What is this feature called on a motherboard? I have seen that there are some nettops that come with a remote control. Are there any mini itx motherboards that could be turned on via Infrared or RS232 commands? I want to build something that can be fully controlled from an external control system.

any recommendations for motherboards that support this?

I am building a whole house audio/video distribution system I want to build a $100 very cheap mini-itx(??) system that is "always on" when power is applied. I also want to control the device with a Crestron control system via wired ethernet. Basically this device will simply be used to stream internet radio from pandora, xm online, last.fm, etc.

So the basic requirements are:

a) cheap, $100
b) ability to stay "always on", if it loses power, when power is restored it must boot up
c) ethernet port so I can control it from an external system
d) fanless and low power draw
e) don't care about the video output cause it is just a streaming music server
f) disk space is not a concern. 1 gig disk is sufficient.

[outleradam]

Some modern bioses have the option available for power state on power loss or restoration on power loss. When the power is lost and reconnected, the computer will turn on. This is a pretty common bios feature but it has alot of names.

I don't know if I would spend only 100 on a computer for running xbmc. Your best bet would be to buy a older computer from ebay.