Redundant power solution for computer system expansion cards

An apparatus for providing redundant power to a plurality of devices on a PCI expansion card, comprising:

• one or more conditionally powered devices connected to a first conditional power source, wherein the one or more conditionally powered devices comprises a conditional video converter configured to convert an analog video signal from an analog video signal to a digitized video signal and to output a digitized video signal to one or more unconditionally powered devices;
• the one or more unconditionally powered devices powered by either a second conditional power source or an unconditional power source, wherein the one or more unconditionally powered devices comprises a frame grabber being programmed to take a portion of the digitized video signal corresponding to one screen frame and to output that portion of the digitized video signal as discrete screen frame data utilized to compute a difference between screen frame data of a current screen and a screen frame data of an immediately preceding screen frame;
• a power control mechanism for delivering power to the one or more unconditionally powered devices from the second conditional power source if the second conditional power source is present or from the unconditional power source if the second conditional power source is not present;
• and
• a processor configured to instruct the one or more unconditionally powered devices to enter a low power mode when the one or more unconditionally powered devices are powered by the unconditional power source.

A remote management card for providing redundant power solutions to computer management devices on the card, comprising:

• a PCI bus connector receiving computer system power and standby computer system power from a local computer;
• one or more unconditionally powered devices powered by either a conditional power source or the standby computer system power, wherein the one or more unconditionally powered devices comprises a FPGA, a LAN physical layer, a USB device and a processor configured to interface a remote computer with the local computer;
• a power sensing mechanism for sensing when the computer system power is interrupted, wherein the power sensing mechanism comprises a power-on reset circuit configured to 1) sense a power loss from the conditional power source and to 2) trigger a switching mechanism to switch the power source to the standby computer system power, and wherein the power-on reset circuit is connected to a computer interrupt configured to trigger the switching mechanism when the power-on reset detects a decrease in the computer system power below a threshold;
• a power control mechanism for delivering power to the unconditionally powered devices from the conditional power source if the conditional power source is present or from the standby computer system power if the conditional power source is not present when the computer system power is interrupted;
• an energy storage component configured to provide power to the unconditionally powered devices when both the conditional power source and the standby computer system power source are not present;
• and
• wherein one or more of the unconditionally powered devices are configured to enter a low power mode by deprogramming the FPGA, reducing a clock speed, and discontinuing any memory refreshes while power is delivered from the standby computer system power.