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. If you have any problems, please contact St. Clair Software at one of the addresses listed in the "Sleeper Documentation" file. Also, please note that Sleeper is shareware. If you decide to keep it, please register your copy.
If you have any problems with Sleeper, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions section of the documentation before contacting us. Many common problems are covered there. If you are still having difficulties, by all means contact us and let us know!
If you have access to the World Wide Web, the most up to date tip sheet for Sleeper can be found at http://www.stclairsw.com/stclairsw/.
Known problems:
- Sleeper should load after Now Utilities' SuperBoomerang. One user has
reported that SuperBoomerang crashes during startup if Sleeper loads first.
- A bug in After Dark 3.0 may cause your Macintosh to crash when the hotkey is
used to dim the screen. Upgrade to After Dark 3.0b.
- Sleeper fails to dim the screen if a Lapis ProColor Server 8-16 board is
being used to drive the monitor.
- The hotkey display does not recognize the A key on Japanese keyboards.
Special Considerations:
Please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions section of the documentation if you have a configuration that exhibits these symptoms:
- The screen dimmer freezes the Mac and a Radius Color Pivot Nubus card
is being used to drive the monitor.
- The screen doesn't dim on a Quadra 660AV or 840AV.
Release Notes:
Version 1.1.4:
- Added code to work around the fact that After Dark 3.0 takes over
the computer so completely that Sleeper never got time to check
whether the drives had been inactive.
- Changed the hotkey logic slightly. The "Only when screen is dimmed"
option would sometimes cause Sleeper to wait 30 seconds before
putting the disks to sleep.
- Fixed a conflict with WindowShade that would cause the screen to
dim if you double-clicked on a title bar and the "Dim Now" corner
was set to the upper left corner of the screen.
- Enabled the "command-option-click on the Info icon" workaround
dialog on all machines, not just Quadra AV's.
- Fixed a compiler optimization problem that could cause the dimming
code to get stuck in an infinite loop when the VBL dimmer was turned
off.
Version 1.1.3:
- Version 1.1.2 was shipped with an internal configuration resource
incorrectly set.
Version 1.1.2:
- Found the real problem with Greg's Buttons - a programming error
in Sleeper caused the SCSI checkboxes to all be disabled sometimes.
- Corrected a problem which caused the Sleeper control panel to
fail to recognize hard disks on the SCSI bus.
- Fixed a case where the processor registers were not properly saved
during disk wake-up, which could potentially cause lockups.
- Added a workaround for a problem with Apple's Express Modem 2.0
software. When Express Modem is installed, Sleeper will warn you to
turn the modem's ring sound volume to zero. This avoids crashes
if allocation of a sound channel takes too long because the disk is
asleep. Special thanks go to Mike Visconti for providing the GeoPort
pod for testing.
- Added a workaround for hangs when the screen dimmer is used with
a Radius Color Pivot Display Card.
- Added verification of credit card numbers in the online registration
form dialog.
Version 1.1.1:
- Correct a problem with the startup icon not being displayed with Now
Startup Manager.
- Worked around a problem with Greg's Buttons 3.7 which caused all the
SCSI checkboxes to be disabled in the Sleeper control panel.
Version 1.1:
- Corrected the problem which caused the Finder to display black and
white icons on grayscale screens after dimming and waking up.
- Enhanced gestalt support to work with SuperClock (aka the System 7.5
Date & Time control panel) and to check whether other dimmers have
dimmed the screen when "Only when screen is dimmed" is turned on.
- Made hotkey work with After Dark and other SAVC-enabled screen
savers.
- Fixed error handling on flaky SCSI buses.
- Fixed a bug which caused hangs with Apple's CD Audio Player.
- Changed check box enabling so Sleeper only allows setup of SCSI devices
that identify themselves as hard disks.
- Changed dimmer to wake up instantly rather than gradually undimming.
- Added workaround for bug in 660AV and 840AV internal video.
- Added wake-up cursor to indicate that a drive is spinning up.
- Added VISA and MasterCard registration.
- Fixed more icon positioning problems during startup.
Version 1.02:
- Fixed bug that caused Sleeper to ignore any device at SCSI ID 6.
- Added the "Only when screen is dimmed." option for disk sleep.
- Added logging of sleep and wake operations.
- Added balloon help.
- Added support for 'SAVR' gestalt, for those that use it.
- Reset sleep timers when control panel settings are changed.
- Improved error checking in screen dimmer code.
- Updated to new ShowInit code so icon positions correctly at startup.
- Expanded explanations in the "About Sleeper" file.
- Changed icon in control panel to better reflect its help function.
Version 1.01:
- The hotkey did not work if drive sleep was turned off.
- Putting non-existent disks to sleep could hang Macs for almost a minute.
- Checkboxes that appeared disabled were sometimes enabled.
- Added watch cursor during SCSI bus scan before control panel comes up.
Version 1.0:
- Wakeup sometimes failed with drives formatted with LaCie's SilverLining
running on a PowerMac.
- Support for international keyboard layouts was added in the hotkey display
in the control panel.
- A conflict with PowerBar which caused the Finder to hang until a modifier
key was pressed was resolved.
Version 1.0b4:
- Apple CD-ROM 5.0 woke up the drive every 2 seconds. The sleep code is now
device specific, so that only the device that is receiving the request gets
awakened.
- Resolved a conflict with After Dark.
- Typing unexpected characters in the delay boxes in the control panel caused
incorrect characters to be displayed.
- Sleep and dim can now be explicitly turned off.
- You can now remove the hotkey setting, so that there is no hotkey defined.
- Better identification of SCSI requests is done so drives will not awaken
unnecessarily.
- The "About Sleeper" file updated to acknowledge lack of support for the SE/30.
