Is there a way to prevent the CD/DVD drive from sleeping?

Everytime I play Baldur's Gate I have reboot when I am finished because the CD/DVD drive in my PB G3/400 Lombard went to sleep and the computer can nolonger access the drive. I have also had similar problems with Starcraft during long scenarios when all of a sudden the game will quit because it cannot access a file from the CD because the drive is asleep.

My PB is my primary machine since I use it for speech synthesis for my speech disability. I have bypassed this problem in the past by using my external CDRW drive for running the game CD's. But now I want to play with others and do not want to carry an external drive with me when I travel. Any helpmis much appreciated. I am getting frustrated.

------------------
Aaron the Alkemst
Cancer Fighter
Extraordinaire

[Don Pickett]

I don't know if the DVD drive goes to sleep. I know the HD does. You can change that by going to the Energy Saver control panel, checking "Separate timing for hard disk sleep" and changing the setting to never. This will drain your battery more, however.

Don't know if this will affect the DVD.

Don

When I am playing these games I am using AC power so battery life is not a question. Also Energy Saver Control Panel does not give options for expansion bay modules. So that is not the answer.

I say the drive is sleeping but not really sure that is accurate. The drive spins down to a stop, and if not accessed by the program for a long period then becomes inaccessible. Upon quitting the program one of 2 states will occur. Either the drive will be unresponsive, i.e. double clicking on drive produces error the drive is inaccessible. In this case the ejecting the disk and putting it back in will make drive accessible again. The second error state that occurs with some CD's is that the finder tries access the drive to update infomation and cannot. In this case the system produces an error dialog. Pushing OK button on dialog brings up the same dialog again in endless loop. Only option is forced reboot.

I am running OS 9.0.4 on a PB G3/400DVD Lombard. I have had this problem all along since I got the computer last October. I am just hoping there is something I do to fix the problem. I could live with rebooting after I finish a game, but the game getting interrupted and crashing or quitting during play by this problem is an unacceptable situation.

------------------
Aaron the Alkemst
Cancer Fighter
Extraordinaire

[Don Pickett]

Don't know what to say. I think this problem is related to something other than Energy Saver - DVD shouldn't spin down, as the mechanism is different than the hard drive, and I have never played the games mentioned.

Anyone else?

Don

[ATP Tour Fan]

Any DVD module for a portable machine has it written in it's firmware to spin down to conserve power.

This is what's happening to your DVD drive.

There's really no other way of getting around it besides flashing the firmware of the Drive and changing it's own power managing settings.

[jeffreyloaf]

I did a quick search at apple and found some possible answers for you.
[url="http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n10022http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n10022[/URL"] http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n14449 http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n31075

If none of these help; just post a reply tommorrow to this thread to keep it near the top. It is a long weekend for some people that have knowledge and they may be away.

Jeff

[This message has been edited by jeffreyloaf (edited 09-02-2000).]

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately they did not help much. I am beginning to wonder if my DVD drive may have a problem.

I understand that the drive will spin down to conserve energy. This is ok and as it should be. The problem is that the drive will not spin up when the system tries to access the disk if it has been idle for more then about 15 to 30 minutes. It is pretty consistent about this. Usually I can drag the disk to the trash and reinsert the disk if I need to access it. But occasionally I get the errors above and have to reboot the system to get out of the error loop.

I would call Apple tech support, but I am speech impaired. I am afraid that would make communicating the problem to them difficult especially considering some of the stories I have heard. I will have to try the Apple Tech Forums I guess.


------------------
Aaron the Alkemst
Cancer Fighter
Extraordinaire

[Don Pickett]

Is there a friend who could/would sit next to you and make the phone call for you, "translating" for the Apple tech Support people? That would probably get the job done.

Don

I think I found the answer. Going back to Apple CD/DVD Driver 1.3.1 fixed the problem with StarCraft not being able to access the CD if idle for more then 15min. I have also not lost the icon for the CD after being in the drive all day through multiple wake and sleep sessions. Further testing is needed to check other problem CD's.

I got the answer on the Apple Tech Support PowerBook Forum. Another user was having a similar problem and it was suggested to him that he try going back to the older driver version.

Don't know what Apple did in the 1.3.5 but it does seem to make 1999 PB DVD-ROM drives fail to wake from idle state if left idle too long.

Thanks for the help.

------------------
Aaron the Alkemst
Cancer Fighter
Extraordinaire