SPINDOWN Version 1.2 - This is the fourth public release of SPINDOWN. (c) Computall Services 1996 Homepage: http://web.ncf.ca/aa571 SPINDOWN - What is it? ------------------ SPINDOWN is a DOS command line utility to set the spindown or timeout values for ATAPI and SCSI CDROM drives. It now supports SCSI drives through the ASPI drivers, ATAPI drives through the ASPI drivers in Windows 95, ATAPI drivers through the ATASPI drivers, and most other ATAPI drives through the native mode interface. I wrote this utility for two reasons. The first was that it seemed in the 'net community that there was no fix for the problem, and second was because of my new Toshiba drive. When the 5302 drive first came out it had (and still does) a nasty habit of going into a sleep mode after 32 seconds. To many people this caused problems when you had to wait for 5-10 seconds every time the drive had to spin back up to speed. Toshiba has released a new driver for their drives which allows you to set the spindown in the command line. It only seems to work for some people, and also has trouble under Windows '95 on some machines. It also only allows you to set the spindown time on boot up, so if you want to change it, you have to reboot your machine. This utility does not necessarily have to be run on a Toshiba. It should run on any ATAPI or SCSI CDROM drive. The Toshiba drives seem to have the shortest SPINDOWN time of any drives on the market. First Warning! PLEASE NOTE: Changing the default values for the timeout may cause problems. The following is a quote directly from the ATAPI spec. "NOTE: Higher values in this parameter may have an adverse effect on the drive MTBF, in some implementations." Second Warning! Make sure you only specify the IO/IRQ/Device of CDROM drives. SPINDOWN has no way of knowing if you have specified a CDROM drive or a hard disk. The hard disk should not recognize the ATAPI commands I send to it, so there shouldn't be a problem. However, please be careful. How do I use it? ----------------- Spindown has a very simple command line interface. It talks to ATAPI drives under DOS through my device driver. It talks to SCSI drives under DOS and Windows through the ASPI driver. It talks to ATAPI drives under Windows 95 through the ASPI driver. Valid timeout values are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 60, 120, 240, 480, 960, and 1920. Any values entered other than these will be rounded down to the next legal value. These legal values are set down in the ATAPI spec. It seems that Toshiba may not necessarily use the exact values in the spec, so the timeouts may vary a little. When using ATAPI and DOS, you must give the program the IO address, the IRQ and the device number of the drive you are trying to change. As well you give it the new timeout value in seconds. Valid IO addresses are 1f0, 17f, 1e0i 1e8, and 168. Valid IRQs are 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 Valid Device numbers are 0 for Master and 1 for Slave. NOTE: Running this program in a DOS window under Windows may give unpredictable results. SPINDOWN checks to see if it is running under Windows and will warn you. When using the ASPI mode for SCSI drives under DOS or Windows, or ASPI mode for ATAPI drives under Windows 95, you must give the program the Adapter #, the SCSI ID and the Logical Unit Number(LUN) of the drive. Valid SCSI IDs are 0 to 7. Valid LUNs are 0 to 7. Normally there is only one adapter in a machine, so the Adapter # is usually 0. Included is a program called SCSIPING. It will scan your machine and list all the CDROMs found and their ADAPTER:SCSI_ID:LUN values. When running under a DOS window under Win95, some machines may support using ATAPI drives through the ASPI interface. However, bugs in Microsoft's drivers prevent this from working on some machines. I have worked a long time to get this working on a lot of machines, but I can't guarantee it will work on all machines. It has taken a significant amount of effort to get around many of the problems in the device drivers written by Microsoft. It appears to be worth the trouble so that you can have much more control over the drives. To use the ASPI interface to the ATAPI drives in a DOS window under Windows 95, you have to use the /95ATAPI option. As of version 1.2, you can also use SPINDOWN with ATAPI drives through the ATASPI drivers. These drivers are for DOS and Win95 and usually come as part of "PowerIDE" from Future Domain when you buy their IDE controller. However, as far as I can tell, the drivers will work on any IDE controller, not just the ones from Future Domain. Using the ATASPI drivers is probably the best way to use SPINDOWN and ATAPI drives. It means that I have the most control over the drive and can bypass all the normal device drivers. In this way I can be sure that the device drivers are not at fault when SPINDOWN doesn't work. If you have a Future Domain IDE controller and PowerIDE, you are all set. You just have to add the device drivers in config.sys and autoexec.bat. (see below my example) If you don't have a Future Domain product, you will have to find the ATASPI drivers elsewhere. You might want to have a look at Mediavision's FTP site (ftp.mediavis.com), or their web site (www.mediavis.com), where they keep update driver files for many of their products. You might find update drivers for your MV600, which runs on a Future Domain controller. The two lines needed in my config.sys file are: device=c:\ataspi\ataspi16.sys /c:170,15,376h /v device=c:\ataspi\fdatacd.sys /d:mscd000 The line needed in my autoexec.bat file is: c:\ataspi\mscdex /d:mscd000 /v /e If you use the /ATASPI or /95ATAPI options, SPINDOWN will also check to see if your drive supports changing the spindown times. SPINDOWN can now directly query the drive itself to see if it supports this. The following is the command line usage: Usage: SPINDOWN TIMEOUT TIMEOUT - Specify the new drive spindown time in seconds /ASPI ADAPTER:ID:LUN - Use ASPI drivers to talk to SCSI drive /ATASPI ADAPTER:ID - Use ATASPI drivers to talk to ATAPI drive /95ATAPI ADAPTER:ID - Use Win 95 ASPI drivers to talk to ATAPI drive /ATAPI IO:IRQ:DEVICE - Use native mode ATA/ATAPI drivers IRQ - Specify the IRQ of the IDE controller DEVICE - Specify the Device number of the IDE drive IO - Specify the IO address of the IDE controller ADAPTER- Specify the ASPI adapter number ID - Specify the ASPI device ID number LUN - Specify the ASPI device logical unit number ---------Examples to set spindown time to 2 minutes: DOS only ATAPI drive at IO=170, IRQ=15, Device#=0 spindown 120 /atapi 170:15:0 DOS or Windows ASPI driver with SCSI drive at Adapter=0, ID=2, LUN=0 spindown 120 /aspi 0:2:0 Windows '95 ATAPI drive at Adapter=0, ID=0 spindown 120 /95atapi 0:2 DOS ATASPI driver with ATAPI drive at Adapter=0, ID=0 spindown 120 /95atapi 0:2 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The following is the output of the program in various configurations: For DOS only, ATAPI drive at IO=170, IRQ =15, Device=0, Timeout=2 minutes spindown 120 /atapi 170:15:0 SPINDOWN 1.0a Copyright (c) 1996 - Computall Services. Running DOS version 6.22 Setting inactivity timer to 2 minutes IO port: 0x170, IRQ: 15, Device: 0 Checking for controller at 0x170 ... Found controller at 0x170 Downloading 0x0c bytes... Downloading remaining 0x04 bytes... Done ----------------------------------------------------------------------- For DOS/Windows, SCSI drive at Adapter=0, SCSI ID=2, LUN=0, Timeout=2 minutes spindown 120 /aspi 0:2:0 /scsi SPINDOWN 1.0a Copyright (c) 1996 - Computall Services. Running DOS version 6.22 Setting inactivity timer to 2 minutes Adapter: 0 ID: 2, LUN: 0 ASPI Manager id: SYMBIOS LOGIC , adapter id: SYM53C8XX vendor_id:TOSHIBA , product_id:CD-ROM XM-3401TA, revision:0283 Spindown time changed successfully... Done ----------------------------------------------------------------------- For Windows 95 only, ATAPI drive at Adapter=0, SCSI ID=0, LUN=0, Timeout=2 minutes spindown 120 /aspi 0:0:0 /atapi SPINDOWN 1.0a Copyright (c) 1996 - Computall Services. Running DOS version 7.0 Running Windows 4.0 Setting inactivity timer to 2 minutes Adapter: 0 ID: 0, LUN: 0 ASPI Manager id: ASPI for Windows, adapter id: ESDI_506 vendor_id:TOSHIBA , product_id:CD-ROM XM-5302TA, revision:1095 Spindown time changed successfully... Done Copying and Registration (does this mean it costs $$$?) ------------------------------------------------------- We are allowing full freedom to copy this program. It IS a fully functional version. It is NOT Crippleware! There is NOT a pro version available for an unreasonable sum of money. There is no registration fee. There will never be an another update. The zip file may be freely redistributed, only as long as all the files are kept together and unchanged in the archive and no additional files are placed in the archive. How to get hold of us for help. ------------------------------- Computall is no longer in business. Do not bother sending messages to any of our old email addresses you may find on the internet. None of the addresses still work and your message will likely be lost without you receiving a bounce message. We may occasionally check messages that are sent via the support web page: http://web.ncf.ca/aa571/support.htm Changes in 1.2 from 1.0a -------------------------- - much better support for ATAPI drives with either ATASPI drivers or ASPI drivers under Win95 - cleaned up the SCSI code to work on more drives Changes in 1.0a from 0.9a -------------------------- - added support for ASPI - added support for SCSI drives - added support for ATAPI drives under Windows '95 - a large number of people were having problems with version 0.9 and were not happy. I think I have all of their problems fixed in this version. I have completely rewritten my dos device driver, and harmonized it with my device drivers for CDDA and ATAINF. This has been quite well tested, and should work much better. - a number of messages have been added when errors occur to help me debug - a number of changes have been made to the code to make up for problems with most Toshiba ATAPI drives that are not completely compliant with the ATAPI spec. (Is it that tough for them to make their drives follow the spec? Other vendors like Sony don't seem to have this problem) Known bugs: - none at this time, but I imagine this will change within a few hours of the software being released