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quietscsi.readme
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1995-02-12
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4KB
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123 lines
Short: Noise saver for SCSI harddrives
Author: fjrei@kbsaar.saar.de (Franz-Josef Reichert)
Uploader: Martin Schulze <masc@CoLi.Uni-SB.DE
Type: disk/misc
TITLE
QuietSCSI
VERSION
1.0 (19.10.94)
AUTHOR
Franz-Josef Reichert
Internet: fjrei@kbsaar.saar.de
DESCRIPTION *** The problem
Do you remember your first Amiga 1000 computer? Everybody
asked you 'Is it really on' when they saw it first, since it
was so q-u-i-e-t. I'll never forget that perfect feeling
having a nice, quiet computer on my desk. Nine years later!
Computers make noise. Computers which contains a harddisk
make even more noise. Computers containing several harddisks
make even much more noise. And they burn energy! Today,
people spend a lot of $$$ to buy themselves screen blankers.
And cooling fans which make less noise than the el-cheapo
thingies all power supply manufacturers use. Oh well,
everybody has a low power monitor and computer. But nobody
realized, that a harddisk spins most time of the day without
reading or writing a single byte! It just spins, burns a lot
of energy, and makes noise.
Can you sleep in the same room when your computer is on? I
can not! The harddisks make too much noise. Well, the power
supply fan makes noise, too. But since I got a temperature
controlled model, I can stand it much better. And there's
another problem. The power led. Yes, it's so bright that I
can read books!
*** The solution
Speaking of SCSI harddisks, there is a mechanism to switch
the motor off. It will just stop to spin as if you switched
your computer off. But the drive is not dead. It's just
q-u-i-e-t. It won't allow you to read or write data, though.
But the controller electronic on the harddisk is still
alive, and it might get a command to restart the drive at
any time. Then it will behave just as if you switched your
computer on. The motor will spin up again, and the drive
will be ready to read or write data.
This little program does exactly this. It monitors all read
and write accesses to the drive. It also monitors all input
events. If there is inactivity for a certain period of time,
it will spin down the drive motor and dim the power led. If
the next command arrives, it will spin up the motor and
switch to led back to bright.
In other words: Leave your amiga alone for some time, and it
will switch the harddisk's motor and the power led OFF. Come
back to your amiga after a while, continue your work. You
won't realize any difference, the harddisk is still quiet.
But the next time you try to read or write data from the
drive, it will switch the power led and the motor ON, and
your harddisk will spin up again. That's the whole magic. It
save energy, and it saves noise.
Maybe you run a BBS and only 2-3 users will log in during
night? Or your computer is alive to catch FAXes all nights,
which will only happen once a week or so? So this is for
you!
REQUIREMENTS
A SCSI harddisk
HOST NAME
Any AmiNet site, e.g. ftp.uni-kl.de 131.246.9.95
DIRECTORY
/pub/aminet/disk/misc
FILENAME
quietscsi.lha
FILESIZE
6092 bytes
PRICE
Giftware, small donation appreciated.
DISTRIBUTION
freely distributable, anybody is hereby encouraged
to include it in freely distributable software libraries.
--
Best regards,
Franz-Josef Reichert GERMANY, fjrei@kbsaar.saar.de
Kuchlinger Strasse 13 VOICE/FAX: +49-6805-21266
66271 Kleinblittersdorf
============================= Archive contents =============================
Original Packed Ratio Date Time Name
-------- ------- ----- --------- -------- -------------
7691 3554 53.7% 19-Oct-94 20:14:54 quietscsi.doc
4124 2467 40.1% 19-Oct-94 20:28:54 quietscsi
-------- ------- ----- --------- --------
11815 6021 49.0% 21-Oct-94 11:51:30 2 files