You can use this software with Plextor readers or writers.
This utility should interest anyones who copy audio CD tracks (to record on a CD-R, for instance). But not only these ones.
I've written this software because when I bought my Plextor drive, I found a useful utility, Plextor Manager, on a floppy in the package. With it, you can decrease the rotation speed of the drives and set other parameters… but if you are a Windows user only because this software is not available for the Mac.
At this time, MacPlexTool manages:
• all Plextor SCSI readers
• all Plextor SCSI writers
Support for IDE (ATAPI) readers and writers not available at this time.
…and was tested with the following drivers:
• Intech CD/DVD SpeedTools™
• FWB CD-ROM Toolkit™
• Apple CD/DVD driver (modified)
Why providing a software to decrease the spindle speed
First, it's an audio professionals' known problem that high speeds during extracting audio (DAE) is a source of clicks, pops or hissing within the track. This may occur even with the state-of-the-art Plextor drives. The problems are worse, with bad mastered CDs, or scratchy / dirty CDs.
Adaptec wrote:
"Few (if any) high speed CD-ROM drives can extract audio successfully at or even near their top-rated data speed. [...] The most common reason is that DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) was performed at too high a speed for your source CD-ROM [...] The solution is to slow down DAE."
As expected, since I decrease a little the spindle speed of my UltraPlex 40, I had no more problems, and I now burn blindly.
Next, I prefer just lower speeds and don't always ear the motor that sounds like a plane reactor or a vaccum cleaner. An UltraPlex 40 is noisy at 40x but incredibly less noisy at 14x-32x. It's useful especially with multimedia CDs or games. Moreover, you increase the drive lifetime.
Put MacPlexTool in the control panel folder of your system folder.
When you modify a setting for your drive, using the MacPlexTool control panel, the setting is applied at once (you don't have to restart in order to apply them). The setting is saved in the RAM memory of the device. However, because it's RAM memory, these settings are lost (i.e. reset to their default values) by the device after it was shut off or when the system is restarted (sending a reset command to it). If you put MacPlexTool in the control panel folder of your system folder, it communicates with the drive(s) at each startup to apply your previous settings.
If MacPlexTool doesn't find any known drive (i.e. a drive for which you choose a setting in the control panel), its displays its icon with a red question mark on it.
If a problem occurs during startup, MacPlexTool displays its icon with a red "X" across it, then shows an error message when the startup is complete.
This control panel doesn't install any code at startup. So, it doesn't slow down your machine nor use the system memory in anyway. More, the code is fully optimized to provide ultra-fast execution at startup.
My drive is powered on but it is not recognized! What's the trouble?
First, it works only with SCSI drives at this time.
Second, you have to install a driver (an extension) in your extension folder for the drive(s) you want to control. This is required to use your CD-ROM drive, or your writer as a reader (i.e. to mount CDs on the desktop). And this is required to use MacPlexTool too.
If you have a reader, no problem: you've already installed a driver for it (FWB CD-ROM Toolkit, Intech SpeedTool, or another one…). Else, as I said, you couldn't mount any CD on your desktop.
If you have a writer and you didn't install one, you can use the "Toast CD Reader" extension (free with the Toast CD and can be download freely from the www.Roxio.com website) or the Apple driver hacked with the well-known patch (download it from www.versiontracker.com).
Remark:
During startup, the CD driver extension you use for your drive(s) doesn't need to be loaded before MacPlexTool. The loading order is not important.
Maximum Rotation Speed:
Set the new speed to a little lower value than the maximum speed of your drive, and open your favorite audio extraction program (like "Toast Audio Extractor") to extract audio securely. This works with almost all audio extraction programs (not only Toast Audio Extractor) or mp3 encoders, just verify that the program extracts at a slower speed as expected.
You can only apply 1x, 2x (4x for writers) and the maximum speed before registering... this is *just* to be sure that MacPlexTool works correctly with your drive(s). Sorry! I'm not very proud of this kind of trial system. But it's easier and secure for me to implement.
I recommended you don't set the speed under 4x for DAE because, on one hand, Plextor older firmwares are not optimized for these speeds (but newest are) and, on the other hand, it's not required to reach full audio quality.
Inactivity Timer:
The inactivity timer is the length of time that the drive shall remain in the hold track state after completion of a read operation. It's useful to increase this value to speed up the drive.
However, keep in mind that always using the highest value may have an adverse effect on the drive life time.
Speed Options:
These options are poorly documented by Plextor and they didn’t implement them in the version of the Plextor Manager I have. However, I added them because someone may find them useful. You can experiment with these options if you want.
Slow down when pause (Anti-vibration):
When the drive achieves a read operation, it speeds down (from 40x to about 14x with the UltraPlex 40). When the MacOS requests the drive again, it has to speed up again. So, unchecking this option slightly speeds up the drive. On the other hand, your hear the motor continuously. Not enjoyable for me...
Works only if you have selected the maximum speed available for your drive’s model with the slider.
Wait until max. Speed is reached to start reading (Anti-vibration):
Uncheck this slightly speeds up the drive that doesn’t require to reach its maximum speed to begin sending data to the computer. It seems to be the more interesting options among these three.
Works only if you have selected the maximum speed available for your drive’s model with the slider.
Adapt speed automaticaly:
If the drive finds an error reading a data CD-ROM, it speeds down before trying to read the data again, giving it more chances to complete the operation. If you disable this option, the drive motor will run at the maximum speed you allowed (using the "Maximum Rotation Speed Allowed" slider) without any deceleration (even during pauses). However, if the drive estimates that it couldn't read reliabily the media, it will switch on this feature itself after a while. You can disable this feature but you shouldn’t.
The "Adapt speed automaticaly" checkbox is disabled for writers. They include this feature too, but you cannot disable it. The "Anti-vibration control" checkboxes are enabled for the 20x reader and higher. Thus, writers and older than the 20x reader include these options but you cannot disable them.
Current limitations:
It works only with SCSI drives at this time.
If you have an IDE (ATAPI) drive, please send-me an e-mail and I will add the support for it if you can test some pre-releases (because my PowerMac doesn't support IDE).
Please, send me bugs reports and spelling mistakes in the software. Thanks.
Shareware fee:
The price of the license is $ 7.95
With this license, you'll be able to register any 1.x versions to be, too.
The process is handled by Kagi.
You can use a card, a check or cash to pay the fee. The transaction is secure.
If you use your card, you'll receive your code within 4 hours only.
Open the about box (select "About MacPlexTool…" in the Apple menu), then click on the "Register…" button and read the instructions.
This fee is needed for me to update my hardware (PPC601) to continue writing clean sharewares for you.
I'm a student... Thanks for your support!
If you bought a license for MacCDSpeed before March 2001, you can receive a free license for MacPlexTool. Send me an e-mail to request it. MacCDSpeed need to be updated. It will be modified to support 90% of SCSI and IDE readers and recorders and enable full range of speeds, bypassing the Apple CD driver, as MacPlexTool does for the Plextor drives.
How can I update my firmware?
You have to download a ".bin" file that contains the firmware itself, and PXUpdate for MacOS that is the application that upload the firmware data to the drive. From the 1.5 version, PXUpdate, manages IDE (ATAPI) drives.
You can download the required files at:
http://www.plextor.be (Go to the Support Page, then to the Advanced Download Page).
However, you don't have to update your firmware to use MacPlexTool.
One more thing, I don't work for Plextor and MacPlexTool is not a Plextor product. So I can't answer to technical questions about Plextor drives. Send them by e-mail to the Plextor technical support. You can reach them at http://www.plextor.com
<<
Hello Fabrice
I just wanted to thank you for providing this invaluable tool. After I
downloaded the first public release and installed, it only took me a few
minutes of testing before I grabbed my credit card and registered
MacPlexTool.
I'm happy that you do the work Plextor should have been doing for the Mac
users. Now my 5-year old son can play his favorite games without
complaining about the noise from the cd drive :-) Here 8x speed is
sufficient and also setting the inactivity timer to max keeps the drive
spinning so there won't be any slowdowns when reading from the drive after
more than the standard 2 minutes. I personally prefer the 14x-32x speed
which gives me a fast but less noisy drive. [...]
Thanks and best regards
Thomas Tvegaard
Copenhagen, Denmark
>>
<< [..] Happy to have this utility. There seems to be nothing else like it.
Thanks for artfully and simply filling the void! >>
I hope this utility will provide help for you too!
Thanks for reading my bad English!
If you have spelling corrections to add to this document or/and to the software itself, please send them to me.
Plextor is a registered trademark as you know. More credits in the about box.
- the previous version freezes during startup with some configuration. The procedures that communicate with the installed drivers have been completely rewritten.
- minor improvements
1.0b1
- it's now a control panel!
- the Internet config extension is no more required
1.0b2
- the two anti-vibrations options were switched in previous releases! This has been fixed.
- now, after setting a parameter in the control panel, MacPlexTool always verifies the drive understood it correctly.
