For the planned TSR implementation:

Wouldn't it be easier to hook DOS program start / end INTs to resend the command?

Hotkey Input is quite difficult to manage in DOS, especially for all Protected Mode games.

Maybe, feel free to tamper with the source 😀

I stumbled upon this thread today while searching the forums for something else and decided to try cdbq out. I'm happy to report that it works perfectly on my Lite-On SOHD-16P 16x DVD drive. With the -s600 parameter, the drive is now completely silent while playing Command & Conquer in DOS, a game which constantly loads music and cinematics from the disc. Without using cdbq, the drive sounded like a vacuum cleaner in this game.

Big thanks to Locutus for making such an excellent utility!

Glad to hear it! 😀

Somehow I have been a member here for a while, and missed this thread! Both the cdbq and the teac drivers look like manna from the heavens! I was just mentioning this was my biggest pet peeve once we got past the 4x-8x cd era. Can't wait to try them out.

Just acquired two DVD-ROM drives from Pioneer, because I like the slot-in mechanism they use.

• Pioneer DVD-120S
• Pioneer DVD-A06S/106S

Sorry to report that they don't support the CD speed ATA command which CDBQ sends to them. They'll happily accept it, but then ignore it.

BUMMER, Pioneer!

Otherwise these drives are pretty great, but they get awfully loud when playing games from CD.

Hey guys. Just wanted to let you know there's a new version out (1.2). Have fun!

Hi there!

Thanks for this great tool @ChrisR3tro !

I just tested version 1.2 with these two LG drives:
LG GSA-4167B
LG GSA-H10A

CDBeQuiet! was able to spin down both drives.
What I did is just boot up a Windows 98 install CD, these LG drives spins the CD so fast that sounds like a Boeing 747 about to take off.
I selected "Boot from CDROM" and then "Boot PC with CDROM support". Ran CDBeQuiet to put the drive at 300KB/sec, the moment I accessed the drive it was really quiet. I copied several installation files from the CDROM with pretty much zero noise.

Thanks again!

Hey kahuna. Thanks for testing out the new version. Glad it works for you!

I added your drives to the compatibility list (online).

ChrisR3tro

ChrisR3tro wrote on 2022-12-11, 19:18:

Hey guys. Just wanted to let you know there's a new version out (1.2). Have fun!

This utility is so cool it even works perfectly fine under DOS 6.22 with a laptop-style/slim CD/DVD-ROM TSSTCorp TS-L462D (firmware AC00), connected to a regular i815 motherboard via a passive IDE > JAE-50 adapter! 😁

Not sure how slow exactly, though, but with the "-s600" switch it certainly sticks to at least its minimum speed of 10x and doesn't seem to try resetting it during a session.

Could you please add the drive name to the compatibility list?

P.S. Did you guys know slim/laptop CD drives can also properly output analogue CD audio (using the cable) with these adapters? %)

Hey Revolter and thanks for the feedback! Your drive has been added!

I did some tests I hope they can be useful, I used a 580mb cd:

NEC ND-3500AG firmware version 2.98:
Vanilla: avg 4686, max 6590.
s2400: avg 1043 max 1455.
s4096: avg 2049, max 2681.
Store settings after open\close tray: yes

It seems it won't reach high speed and even at the fastest setting the cd drive is barely noticeable.

Lite On LTN-527T firmware version 5s0e:
Vanilla: avg 5177, max 7269 (noisy as hell).
s4096: avg 1803, max 2518.
Store settings after open\close tray: yes

I do wonder if it's a bug of my system but the speed setting doesn't seem accurate.
Also I noticed that I got a slight different result if I used the videccd\mscdex instead of my usually combo xdvd2\shsucdx:
s4096: avg 1770, max 2171 (reached this speed and didn't any further at around 65%) with liteon drive.

Nemo1985 wrote on 2023-03-26, 18:02:

I did some tests I hope they can be useful

Great, thanks! I have added your drives to the list of supported models.

Nemo1985 wrote on 2023-03-26, 18:02:

I do wonder if it's a bug of my system but the speed setting doesn't seem accurate.
Also I noticed that I got a slight different result if I used the videccd\mscdex instead of my usually combo xdvd2\shsucdx:
s4096: avg 1770, max 2171 (reached this speed and didn't any further at around 65%) with liteon drive.

That's normal. Most drives don't adhere to the requested speed setting very accurately. I don't know about that difference between drivers, shouldn't really be an issue imo. Maybe a glitch in the Matrix. :-p

Regards
ChrisR3tro

Tested with Mitsumi CR-48XCTE Firmware 3.0E:
-s600 works and keeps the drive at a constant 4x speed without spinning up.
-s1200 didn't change anything, the CD drive still spun up to its max speed.
-s900 reverted to 4x instead of the expected 6x.

Since it's an old 386 PC, 4x is totally fine.

Hi there,
I’m afraid I have a couple of issues to report. These are with an LG GSA-4167B (IDE/33) drive and shsucdx.

First of all if I open the tray and insert another cd, it goes back to full speed. Not a big issue as I can run cd be quiet again and problem solved.

The important one: There is some sort of unintentional caching going on when changing cds. I’ve seen a couple of times that the contents of the cd are current but the cd label is the one from the previous cd I used.
E.g., I was finishing playing Actua Soccer, I wanted to play Albion next. When I tried to run Albion, it complained that the cd inserted was not the one this game was expecting. Just looking around with “dir” essentially what was going on is that the files were the Albion ones, but the cd label was still “actuasoc”.

Is there a way of resetting this? I’m just thinking to run a simple command before trying to play the next game, to make sure is going to clean up whatever was there, so it will just work with the next one.

Thanks!

Small issue: Is there a possibility to make the cdbq parameters not case sensitive? Some setup programs like to save the autoexec.bat and change every letter to upper-case resulting in cdbq error messages as the parameters are case-sensitive and need to be lower-case.

kahuna wrote on 2024-01-28, 07:50:

Is there a way of resetting this? I’m just thinking to run a simple command before trying to play the next game, to make sure is going to clean up whatever was there, so it will just work with the next one.

Are you using smartdrive or some other caching tool? smartdrive /c should flush the cache, /U disables it for CD-drives entirely (smartdrive should not really be needed on such a new drive)

Siran wrote on 2024-03-13, 09:29:

kahuna wrote on 2024-01-28, 07:50:

Is there a way of resetting this? I’m just thinking to run a simple command before trying to play the next game, to make sure is going to clean up whatever was there, so it will just work with the next one.

Are you using smartdrive or some other caching tool? smartdrive /c should flush the cache, /U disables it for CD-drives entirely (smartdrive should not really be needed on such a new drive)

No, I am not using smartdrive.

By the way, I have built yet another retro PC with yet another LG drive but a different model. I will test with that one when I have the chance.

Thx!

ChrisR3tro wrote on 2008-08-22, 16:14:

That sounds good. Thanks for testing so far.

Btw, if Nero DriveSpeed is detecting available speeds first, that suggests that it uses a completely different approach to throttle the CD drive compared to my tool. I don't know how they do it. 😀

Maybe they are using vendor-specific functionality...

It shouldn't be vendor-specific. I assume they're using the same ATAPI commands that the Linux eject command wraps:

1       -X, --listspeed
2           With this option the CD-ROM drive will be probed to detect the available speeds. The output is a list of speeds which can be used as an argument of the -x option. This only works with Linux
3           2.6.13 or higher, on previous versions solely the maximum speed will be reported. Also note that some drives may not correctly report the speed and therefore this option does not work with them.
4
5       -x, --cdspeed speed
6           With this option the drive is given a CD-ROM select speed command. The speed argument is a number indicating the desired speed (e.g., 8 for 8X speed), or 0 for maximum data rate. Not all devices
7           support this command and you can only specify speeds that the drive is capable of. Every time the media is changed this option is cleared. This option can be used alone, or with the -t and -c
8           options.

ssokolow wrote on 2024-06-22, 09:14:

It shouldn't be vendor-specific. I assume they're using the same ATAPI commands that the Linux eject command wraps:

That makes sense infact

Quick update: Just released stable version 1.3.0 !