plextor-tool is a small console utility for setting certain parameters of Plextor(r)/MMC CD-ROM/CD-R(W) drives. Currently users may change the speed of the drive, the time before the drive spins down, the volume of the internal analog output, and three bits controlling the spin-down/error behaviour (two of these bits are only available for Plextor 20TSx and later and the third one is only available for Plextor CD-ROM drives). The following drives should be supported: PX-4[XX], PX-6[XX], PX-8[XX], PX-12[XX], PX-20[XX], PX-32[XX], PX-40[XX]. [XX] means something like TS/CH/.... All testing was done with a PX-32TSi. In theory all MMC compatible drives are supported starting with version, 0.4.0 nevertheless I only tested a Yamaha CDR400c and a CRW4260 (Hint: I would like to hear about success/failures with other drives, especially Plextor ones). Users already reported that my tool did even work with a ATAPI cd writer using the SCSI emulation. Unfortunately not all SCSI calls did work so my tool did set the speed but partially reported incorrect information about the current setting of the drive.

plextor-tool-applet is a GNOME applet providing basically the same functionality as plextor-tool (of course it's Linux/GNOME only => not available for Windows or KDE). The applet lets uses change all parameters described in the last paragraph and all changes to the default configuration are changed and re-done when the applet is started again (together with the GNOME panel).

For little more specific information on plextor-tool see the readme of the latest version (of course included in the distribution).

For little more specific information on plextor-tool-applet see the latest help file properties-0.html of the latest version (of course included in the distribution).

To give plextor-tool or plextor-tool-applet a try you can download it right from this site. The program is distributed under the terms of the GPL.

I would very much appreciate it if you dropped me a mail about your success/failure with this tool or any other comment about it. Especially because I only tested the x86 glibc (2.0/1/2) version I would be interested whether the other versions work.

Currently I have no plans for more features (if you have an idea). Nevertheless there is a TODO file in the source tar ball and I would be happy if somebody would work on the items. Also if somebody wants to provide binary packages or patches for new ports/functionality I would be interested in incorporating them.

The Win32 version was compiled using the Cygnus port of the gcc. I used version 1.3.1 (with gcc 2.95.3). Any newer version should also be fine (you might check for a new one).