Sleeper is a control panel for desktop Macs that dims the screen and spins down SCSI disk drives after periods of inactivity. Separate "sleep" times can be set for the two features. Setting up via the control panel is straightforward, and there is help available via balloon help and by clicking the Sleeper icon.
Contents:
The Screen Dimmer
SCSI Disk Sleeping
Monitoring Sleep/Wake Cycles
About Portable Macs
Registration
Credits and Disclaimers
The Screen Dimmer
No, it doesn't show you pictures of Tribbles or Mickey Mouse, but it does dim your screen effectively. Some people insist that, due to advances in phosphor coating technology, today's displays don't have "burn-in" problems like the original Mac did. Regardless of whether this is true or not, dimming the screen also keeps your Mac from distracting you, keeps others from peering at work in progress, and reduces power consumption.
Please note that if you have an Energy Star monitor, you should continue to use Apple's Monitor Energy Saver (or your manufacturer's equivalent) to turn off your monitor when you are away from your Mac for long periods. Sleeper cannot perform this function, but is useful for dimming the screen before the Monitor Energy Saver's minimum delay of 15 minutes takes effect.
Sleeper works by changing the monitor's gamma table, which controls the brightness of the signals which drive the display. Doing this requires Color Quickdraw and GDevice support for your monitor(s), so Sleeper's screen dimming will not work on the compact Mac models (512, Plus, SE, SE/30, Classic). If you use Sleeper on one of these machines, it will not dim the screen, but the disk sleep feature will still work.
Note that for the screen dimmer, "inactivity" is defined as the amount of time since you have moved the mouse, typed on the keyboard, or inserted a disk.
SCSI Disk Sleeping
While there are numerous utilities to dim screens, there are few programs which spin down idle disk drives (aside from the driver-level capabilities of some disk formatters). The advantage of spinning down a disk is that it reduces the drive's power requirements and noise levels when you leave your Mac unused for extended periods of time. Since a disk drive is a physical mechanism, you don't want to constantly spin it down and back up because this will increase wear on the drive. However, spinning a drive up and down with the same frequency with which most people shut down and restart their Macs won't do any harm (a sleep time of 30 to 90 minutes is usually reasonable).
Depending on your usage patterns, using the "Only if screen is dimmed" option may allow you to set a shorter sleep delay time without the disk going to sleep while you are working. With this option on, Sleeper will only spin down the disk after the sleep delay has expired and the screen has been dimmed (by Sleeper, After Dark, or any other screen saver that supports the 'SAVR' gestalt selector). So, if you're working with the mouse or keyboard, your screen dimmer will not activate, and therefore neither will Sleeper's disk sleep function.
For disk sleeping, "inactivity" is defined as the absence of read or write activity to any of the disks which Sleeper is monitoring. Note that if you have a screen saver like After Dark or another utility that periodically reads information from your hard disk, it may prevent your disk from spinning down or may cause it to repeatedly go to sleep and wake up, depending on the delays you have set. See the "Monitoring Sleep/Wake Cycles" section for more details.
Some old SCSI disks, MO drives, and CD-ROM drives do not respond to the SCSI Stop command which Sleeper uses to idle the disk, so there is a possibility that Sleeper won't work with your disk drive. The only way to find out is to try it. Sleeper writes any information in the disk cache to disk before it spins down the drive, so in the unlikely event that your drive does go to sleep and then refuses to awaken, turning off power to the machine should do no great harm.
Sleeper is SCSI Manager 4.3 savvy (if you're an AV or PowerMac user, you care about this) and does not use the SCSI Reset command to wake drives back up, since this can do strange things to scanners and tape drives. Sleeper will not spin down the internal drives of the PB150 and Quadra/Performa/LC 630, since they use IDE disks rather than SCSI disks. Sleeper uses SCSI commands to control the disks.
Monitoring Sleep/Wake Cycles
Sleeper keeps an internal log of its activity since the last restart, which can help you verify that it has or has not been working. Holding down the option key while clicking on the Sleeper icon in the control panel will bring up the activity log. If you feel that Sleeper is unnecessarily or inexplicably waking the disks, check the log to see what it's doing. Before contacting St. Clair Software with questions of this nature, make sure you have the commands from the activity log written down, since we will need them to determine what SCSI operations woke up the disks.
About Portable Macs
Sleeper is not terribly useful on PowerBooks, since it provides the same functionality as the built-in Power Manager. It works, but is redundant so you probably will not find any value in it. Also, a PowerBook's screen should actually be turned off rather than dimmed, since any pattern in the LCD, white or black, can be "burned-in" according to Apple.
Registration
Sleeper is distributed as Shareware. You are welcome to download and try Sleeper free for 30 days, after which time we ask that you pay the $20.00 registration fee if you continue to use it. A registration form can be printed from within the help dialog in the control panel for your convenience (click on the Sleeper icon in the control panel). Users with CompuServe accounts can also register online. GO SWREG and register for product #3395.
Site licenses are also available. They include hardcopy documentation, technical support, and free updates. Contact St. Clair Software for details.
In our attempts to provide the best product possible, your comments are also welcome. Please send comments, your registration form, and payment to:
St Clair Software
2025 Mohawk Road
Upper St. Clair, PA 15241
Attn: Jon Gotow
We can also be reached by electronic mail at the following addresses:
Internet: gotow@ansoft.com
CompuServe: 72330,3455
America Online: StClairSW
FAX: (412)835-4402
Sleeper is a copyrighted product, and St. Clair Software retains all rights to it. It is not to be redistributed for profit or bundled with any other product without written consent.
Credits and Disclaimers
Sleeper was developed using Symantec C++ (THINK C, actually), so portions are copyright Symantec Corp. The gamma table fading code is based on Matt Slot's Gamma Fade library, with changes to make it safer and slightly "smarter." The SCSI sleep feature was inspired by a short assembly language snippet called SCSI Stop, done by Ephraim M. Vishniac in 1986.
While St. Clair Software has made every effort to deliver a high quality product, we do not guarantee that this product is free from defects. St. Clair Software is not responsible for any damage to the purchaser's computer system or data and in no event will St. Clair Software, its officers, directors, employees or agents be responsible to the purchaser for any consequential, incidental, or indirect damages (including but not limited to damages for loss of business profits, business interruption, or loss of data) arising out of the use or inability to use the St. Clair Software product, even if St. Clair Software has been advised of the possibility of such damages. Because some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of liability for consequential or incidental damages, the above limitations may not apply to you.
