TEAC CD-540E: speed limiter and slow-down timer.

From: PetroffHeroj (forged_at_address.net)
Date: 02/27/04 

Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 00:36:10 +0300 (MSK)

Very sorry if it's off-topic here. Don't crush me, please, I had almost
given up hope finding anything on the subject.

Hello.

The question is about TEAC CD-540E CD-ROM drive. Could anybody give a clue
on how can one 0) speed down that vacuum cleaner :), and -- on the other
hand -- 1) set the slow-down timer to something greater than its default 7-8
seconds?

* The first problem is rather obvious. The standard TEAC utility for CD-540E
doesn't help any, it doesn't deal with limiting CD-ROM speed. However,
there's Nero DriveSpeed, but I am not running windoze...

The list of drives supported by Nero DriveSpeed has TEAC CD-540E among other
drives, and lists the following speeds it can be limited to: 10x, 20x, 40x;
that brings to a conclusion that the drive can be simply commanded to limit
its speed, without any tricks needed from the host computer after that.

* The second problem is more confusing.

The aforementioned TEAC utility DOES have the timer setting, and it's
remembered in drive's flash memory so one could set it once and forever and
enjoy.

However, it was found that "very high speed" drives (like this 40x) must
have two different timers. The first one determines when the spindle comes
to a complete stop (that setting is present in the utility), the second
timer determines when the spindle slows down from the maximum speed. I
couldn't find anything like that about a lower speed drive, the 24x TEAC
CD-524EA: that one only has the former setting, not the latter, i.e. it
normally maintains full speed, until the timer expires, then it stops the
spindle completely.

Well, the time it takes to start reading data when the spindle is just in
the slow-down state is very small (about .5 seconds or so), especially
compared to the time it takes for the spindle to recover from being stopped
completely (seen 3 seconds and more). But it's still terribly annoying,
especially with games and especially at that rate: every 7-8 idle seconds
the spindle slows down significantly. Getting rid of this frequent slow-down
(or boosting it to at least 1-2 minutes) would be a bless.

So, the question is: does anybody know how to solve one or both of these
problems, either for this model only by using proprietary commands, or by
using standard ATAPI commands for that purpose, if any such exist?

Thanks in advance!

        Leonid