CN100412758C - Computer for playing music by operating CD driver with low power consumption - Google Patents

Abstract

A computer for operating an optical disk drive to play music with low power consumption includes an optical disk drive, a system control, a processor and a keyboard controller. The system controller is connected with the CD driver by an IDE bus, the processor is connected with the system controller, when the computer is in a normal mode, the processor can control the CD driver to perform music processing by a control signal through the system controller, the keyboard controller is connected with the CD driver by a sequence bus, when the computer is in a music playing mode, the keyboard controller is irrelevant to the processor, and the keyboard controller can transmit the control signal to the CD driver through the sequence bus to enable the CD driver to perform music processing.

Description

A computer that operates an optical disc drive for music playback with low power consumption

(1) Technical field

The present invention relates to a computer with low power consumption to operate an optical disc drive for playing music, in particular to a computer which utilizes a serial bus to control the optical disc drive to reduce its overall construction cost.

(2) Background technology

A desktop computer or a notebook computer, in addition to executing specific application programs for document, image processing, and program editing, can also be used as a personal multimedia playback platform.

Due to the popularity of optical storage media such as optical discs and digital video discs (DVDs), most computers are equipped with optical disc drives as a medium for reading optical storage media, except for general data access functions. , the optical disc drive itself also has the function of playing music discs (CD-A, defined by the Red Book), because the firmware and hardware built in the disc drive can already decode the music data of the music disc, and then digitally After /analog conversion, it can be output to the speaker for broadcasting.

Under normal circumstances, if a user wants to play a music CD, the computer must be in a "full open" situation. In other words, the processor and operating system in the computer must be kept in operation before the application can be used to control the CD drive. Play music, but if the computer is only used for music playback, most of the power is consumed on electronic components other than the optical disc drive, so it is extremely uneconomical, especially for notebook computers, the power of the battery It is easier to become depleted due to heavy consumption.

Referring to Fig. 1, in view of the above-mentioned shortcoming, so-called computer 200 (or the computer that can play music without starting up) that can play music under (suspend) has been developed at present, and its interior mainly includes A processor 21 , a system controller 22 , a power management controller 23 , an optical disk drive 24 , an optical disk drive controller 25 , a keyboard controller 26 and a hard disk 27 . In this suspend mode, the processor 21 and the hard disk 27 are not supplied with power, only the optical disk drive 24 , the power management controller 23 , and the keyboard controller 26 are supplied with power.

In the normal mode, the processor 21 and the system controller 22 send a control signal (ATAPI) to the optical disc drive 24 . When in the pause mode, the keyboard, mouse, etc. are used to send signals to the keyboard controller 26, and then the CD driver controller 25 sends a control signal to the CD driver 24 to make the CD driver 24 play, stop, and pause music. wait for action.

Because in the above two different modes, the transmission of the control signal is carried out by the IDE bus 30 connected to the optical disc drive 24, so in addition to the additional optical drive controller 25, a multiplexer 28 is also required (there will also be The optical disk drive controller 28 is integrated with the multiplexer 25) to switch the transmission of control signals in different modes, so the required hardware construction cost is considerable.

(3) Contents of the invention

The object of the present invention is to provide a computer for playing music by operating an optical disk drive with low power consumption, which can construct the required hardware at a low construction cost.

The invention provides a computer for operating a CD drive with low power consumption to play music, comprising a CD drive, a system controller, a processor and a keyboard controller.

The optical disc drive can be controlled by an optical disc drive control signal (ATAPI control signal) to perform music processing, such as play, stop, pause, previous track, next track, exit and so on. The system controller is connected to the optical disk drive by an IDE bus, and the processor is connected to the system controller. When the computer is in a normal mode, the processor can control the computer via the system controller. The signal controls the disc drive for music processing.

The keyboard controller is connected with the optical disk drive by a serial bus. When the computer is in a music playing mode, the keyboard controller is independent of the processor, and the keyboard controller can transmit the control via the serial bus The signal is sent to the optical disc drive to make the optical disc drive perform music processing.

The computer of the present invention can work under the normal mode and the music playing mode. When in the music playing mode, the processor and the system controller are not powered, so the keyboard controller is independent of the processor, so it can The optical disk drive is controlled to play music with low power consumption, and more preferably, because an additional serial bus is used to transmit control signals in music mode, the cost of hardware construction can be reduced.

(4) Description of drawings

The present invention is described in detail below in conjunction with accompanying drawing and embodiment, in accompanying drawing:

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating a conventional computer operating an optical disc drive for music playback with low power consumption; and

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram illustrating a preferred embodiment of the present invention for a computer operating an optical disc drive for music playback with low power consumption.

(5) specific implementation

Referring to Fig. 2, the preferred embodiment of the computer 100 that the present invention operates CD drive 3 to play music with low power consumption mainly comprises a processor 1, a system controller 2, a CD drive 3, a keyboard controller 4, a A power supply 5 and a power management controller 6 . For the purpose of simplifying the description, other such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM), read-only memory (ROM), RTC chips, etc., because these are those who are familiar with the art can easily understand, so they are not specified here. The main action parts of the present invention are described.

The processor 1 refers to a general central processing unit (CPU), such as 80X86, Pentium and other series produced by Intel Corporation. The processor 1 is used to capture relevant program codes from the memory (not shown) to perform various applications. Calculation and execution of programs, operating systems, and drivers. The system controller 2 refers to the south bridge chip that supports the processor 1. In addition to transmitting the control signals sent by the processor 1 to other peripheral components, it can also be used to receive the requirements of each peripheral component, and then to the processor 1. Send an interrupt signal to take control of processor 1.

The optical disc drive 3 and the system controller 2 are connected to each other through an Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE for short) bus 10 (also known as ATA bus). Of course, in a general computer system, there is usually a main IDE bus and a secondary IDE bus, and each bus can be connected to two IDE/ATA electronic devices, such as hard disks, CD drives, etc. In this embodiment, only Indicates one of the IDE buses 10 . The optical disc drive 3 refers to a CD player (CD player), a CD burner (CD-RW), a digital video disc player (DVD player), or a digital video disc burner (DVD-RW). CD drive for music CDs.

It should be noted that between the optical disc drive 3 and the system controller 2, an ATA packet interface (ATAPI control signal, ATAPI command) is used as a standard agreement for communication between the two. This agreement is to transmit data in a packet form, so Optical disc drive 3 can adopt standard IDE bus 10 to carry out data transmission like general hard disk, and in the present embodiment, ATAPI optical disc drive 3 refers to a standard thin optical disc drive (slim CD-ROM), its 50 pins (pin) 16 pins (DD6 ~ DD21) in the 16-bit data transmission.

The keyboard controller 4 is connected to the system controller 2. Generally, when the user presses a button on a keyboard (not shown), a scan code (scan code) will be sent to the keyboard controller 4. Temporary storage, and the keyboard controller 4 sends an interrupt request (IRQ1) to the system controller 2, so that the processor 1 can read the data through the I/O port (60h) and send it to the application program. Of course, the keyboard controller 4 can also receive the coordinate signal of the PS/2 mouse to further control the movement of the cursor on the computer screen.

On the other hand, the keyboard controller 4 is also connected to the optical disc drive 3 through a serial bus 20. In the present embodiment, the serial bus 20 refers to a bus that transmits data in a serial manner, and may be an asynchronous serial bus, such as RS-232 , or a synchronous serial bus such as I2C. Since the standard of RS-232 is well known in the industry, and the further details of I2C have been disclosed in US Pat. No. 4,689,740, details will not be repeated here.

In order to make the serial bus 20 be connected with the optical disc drive 3, it is therefore to utilize two reserved pins on the optical disc drive 3, pin 49 and pin 50, as the transmission of the serial bus 20 bidirectional data. There are pins for serial transmission, so it can be easily connected to the serial bus 20, especially, in this embodiment, when the logic circuit in the keyboard controller 4 is triggered by a specific key 41, the specific key 41 Refers to specific combination keys on the keyboard, additional keys, or additionally designed panels, etc., which can make the keyboard controller 4 send ATAPI control signals, such as Play_AUDIO_MSF (opcode is 47h), START/STOP_UNIT (opcode 1Bh), PAUSE (opcode is 4Bh), READ_TOC (opcode is 43h), INQUIRY (opcode is 12h), and sent to the optical disc drive 3 via the serial bus 20 to control the optical disc drive 3 to perform music processing, such as playing , stop, pause, previous track, next track, exit and other actions.

In order to be able to process the aforementioned ATAPI control signals sent by the keyboard controller 4 in a serial manner, it is necessary to partially modify the internal firmware of the optical disc drive 3 so that the optical disc drive 3 has the ability to interpret serial signals. This method only transmits one bit of data at a time, so part of the operation code must be temporarily stored, and after receiving the required operation code and all the bits of the required data, each command is executed according to the operation code.

The power supply 5 is used to supply power to the above-mentioned components. When in normal mode, the power management controller 6 does not work, that is, all components are powered normally. When the user does not have any input action for a period of time , or when the user directly selects the music playback mode with the application program, the power management controller 6 will turn off the specific transistors (S1-S3) of each component connected to the power supply (VCC) according to the command of the processor 1, so as to cut off its power supply In this mode, since the processor 1 does not work, the keyboard controller 4 is independent of the processor 1 outside the control of processor 1.

The following describes the flow of control signals of the optical disc drive in normal mode and music playback mode (pause mode):

(1) Normal Mode -

In the normal mode, the user can use an application program, such as "media player" (media player) or "CD player" of Windows, to issue a command to control the CD drive 3 to play music, and the processor 1 passes the control signal through The system controller 2 and the IDE bus 10 transmit to the optical disk drive 3 to control the music playing.

(2)Music Play Mode-

In the music playing mode, by pressing the specific key 41, the ATAPI control signal can be sent to the optical disc drive 3 via the keyboard controller 4 and the serial bus 20, so that the optical disc drive 3 can play music without the need for the processor 1. to control. Since only the power is supplied to the optical disc drive 3 and the keyboard controller 4, compared with the normal mode, most power consumption can be reduced.

To sum up the above, the present invention utilizes the keyboard controller 4 to transmit the ATAPI control signal via the serial bus 20, so components such as a multiplexer and an optical disc drive controller in the past are not needed. In addition to being able to play music with low power consumption, Furthermore, the overall hardware construction cost is reduced due to the reduction of conventional components, and the purpose of the present invention is indeed achieved.

Claims (8)

1. A computer for operating an optical disc drive to play music with low power consumption, characterized in that it comprises: A CD drive, capable of being controlled for music processing; a system controller connected to the optical disk drive with an IDE bus; a processor, connected to the system controller, when the computer is in a normal mode, the processor can control the optical disk drive to perform music processing with a control signal via the system controller; and A keyboard controller is connected with the optical disk drive by a serial bus. When the computer is in a music playing mode, the keyboard controller has nothing to do with the processor, and the keyboard controller can transmit the control signal to On the CD-ROM drive, enable the CD-ROM drive for music processing. 2. The computer according to claim 1, wherein the serial bus is an RS232 asynchronous serial bus. 3. The computer according to claim 1, wherein the serial bus is an I2C synchronous serial bus. 4. A method for controlling a CD drive to play music in a computer, characterized in that it comprises the following steps: In a normal mode, a processor transmits a control signal to an optical disk drive through an IDE bus, so that the optical disk drive performs music processing; and In a music playing mode, a keyboard controller transmits the control signal to the optical disc drive through a serial bus, so that the optical disc drive performs music processing, thereby operating the optical disc with low power consumption and transmitting the control signal to the optical disc drive It is carried out when the computer is in a music playing mode with low power consumption, and the keyboard controller is independent of the processor. 5. The method as claimed in claim 4, wherein the step of transmitting the control signal to the optical disc drive is performed when the computer is in a music playing mode with low power consumption. 6. The method according to claim 4, characterized in that: the serial bus is an RS232 asynchronous serial bus. 7. The method according to claim 4, wherein the serial bus is an I2C synchronous serial bus. 8. The method according to claim 4, characterized in that: the music processing is one of music playback, stop, pause, next track and previous track.

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