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Hardware drivers (CD/DVD specifically) and anychrony

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Hardware drivers (CD/DVD specifically) and anychrony

Subject: Hardware drivers (CD/DVD specifically) and anychrony
From: Jim Witte <email@hidden>
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:11:05 -0400

Very simple (or perhaps not) question, which might be more appropriate for an IOKit list: Is there a technical reason why *certain* phases of the actions of hardware, such as disk spin-up, spin-down, eject, and insertion (while the drive is positioning the head and such, before it begins to read I presume) cannot be performed synchronously, and thus not block the entire system?

My Macbook (Core Duo) is set to require the password on wake, and I notice a lot that I just get the SBOD, *while the drive* is spinning up. I suppose it's reading something in order to allow the OS to 'reset' the FS connection to the device so that it can be read like a normal device, hence the system block. But simply displaying a dialog and checking a password should not require any of that - although things that happen *after* the password is entered correctly might - but I doubt it would have anything to do (immediately) with the DVD drive, although the drive may somehow block the ATAPI chain affecting HDD access.

I'm not sure if there are any drivers that will block the entire system for significant amounts of time because of (necessarily) slow hardware, but I wonder if the drivers and/or firmware could be modified to make certain parts of the processes able to execute synchronously. This might require the kernel to be able to somehow determine that some things (like resetting file pointers or whatever it does on wake with a mounted DVD) to be 'delayed' while other tasks can complete. This might or might not be possible, or feasible.. (INTOSC - "I've never taken an OS class") :)

But it might be something to think about for Darwin (Tiger version) +5 or something.. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-dev mailing list (email@hidden) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: This email sent to email@hidden Follow-Ups: Re: Hardware drivers (CD/DVD specifically) and anychrony From: "Shawn Erickson" <email@hidden> Prev by Date: Re: Questions about launchd Next by Date: Re: Hardware drivers (CD/DVD specifically) and anychrony Previous by thread: Shutdown/Reboot/Logout problem. Next by thread: Re: Hardware drivers (CD/DVD specifically) and anychrony Index(es): Date Thread