Hi,

Often when the finder on my beige G3 accesses the CD drive (even when just checking it when I try to save a file) the entire system lags for a few seconds. It seems like this may be a problem of it waking up from sleep mode. Has anyone else experienced this problem?

It seems that the iMac CD firmware update addresses this same problem. Any chance they've got the same CD drives? Thanks for the help!

[natro301]

yes by chance did you buy this at mac mart

No, I bought it at the apple store. Have you come up with any solutions to the problem?

[natro301]

is it a cd or is it a dvd

I have a beige G3 with DVD that exhibits
the same delay while the disk is being spun
up. It'd be nice if it didn't happen!

I have the same problem exept I have a 6500 with a 12X CD drive. The whole computer momentarally freezes while the CD gets spun up and accessed. Its especially annoying when you are in open and save boxes. I think the delay must be longer for those of you that have 24X drives but I'm not sure. It would be nice if there was an extension that would control the reed speed of a CD depending on the information requested but I don't even know if that can be done with a standard CD drive.

-corwin

Congratulations, you have just discovered the down side of IDE devices, the CPU is involved in the use of the IDE device so every reference will have a negative impact on your machine.

The upside is that IDE devices are cheaper than SCSI devices.

To eliminate the delay when referencing your CD/DVD you just have to swap it for a SCSI device.

To minimize the impact of this design compromise, only have a CD or DVD in the drive if you are using it, keep the drive empty the rest of the time.

Don't ya just love computers..

[This message has been edited by sedgwick (edited 08-17-99).]

duplicate deleted

Don't ya just hate computers..


[This message has been edited by sedgwick (edited 08-17-99).]

It's a CD drive, not DVD.

sedgwick, the processor idea makes sense, but I'm not sure it explains why the entire computer "locks up". I literally can't do anything but move the mouse when the drive is being checked.

I've never seen this problem on a PC, and I have a G3/266- ample power to support finder operations while the drive is checked I would think.

I wonder if the difference between a Mac and PC with an IDE CD-ROM is that Windows is not as actively aware of whether disks are inserted into drives (CDs, floppies, etc)- I've heard, for instance, that Windows will let you write a file to a floppy drive that doesn't have a disk in it-

I have seen similar CD spin up delays with my son's beige Rev A G3, and I assumed that when you do any finder-related action, and Mac OS knows there's a CD-ROM mounted, it checks in with it before taking the finder action. The result is an irritating delay.

I almost swapped out the IDE CD-ROM with an internal 24x SCSI (about $79 at PowerOn)- that would also have freed up an IDE connection to add a second IDE hard drive to, but my son said it didn't bother him that much...

[HackManDan]

I have a 6100 with an ex 32x SCSI CD-ROM and everytime I insertn a CD it takes abour 3-4 seconds for the computer to become responcive.

[HackManDan]

I have a 6100 with an ex 32x SCSI CD-ROM and everytime I insertn a CD it takes abour 3-4 seconds for the computer to become responcive.

Peecees will not let you write to an empty drive. Nice idea, though :-)

In addition, peecees *do* have the same delay, IF they are waiting for data from the drive in an active process with RealTime priority. (In other words, the whole 'putter is waiting for the good stuff.)

For CD's that have been in the drive for a while, I found that it helped (but I'm a MacNewbie here) to increase my disk cache size to the max, 8160K. (O'course, I've got 160MB of RAM. Also, double-click the volume's icon as soon as the volume mounts, to get that Desktop file in da cache.


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-aardvarko
aardvarko at geocities dot com