Sleeper is a control panel for desktop Macs that spins down the hard disk, dims the screen, and powers off Energy Star compliant monitors after periods of inactivity. Separate "sleep" times can be set for the different features. Setting up via the control panel is straightforward, and there is help available by clicking the "Info" icon.
Please note that Sleeper is distributed through the shareware system. If you use it, please take the time to pay for your copy. It’s the only way we’ll be able to continue to support and improve the product, so your payment does matter! The "Register SCS" application is included for registering your copy via the Kagi registration service. The file "How To Register" contains more instructions on registering.
What's Included:
• Sleeper Read Me : This file.
• Sleeper : The control panel that does all the work.
• Sleeper Documentation : A standalone application containing Sleeper's Manual.
• Sleep Now : An application that tells Sleeper to put your Mac to Sleep. This is useful as an Apple Menu item or when you want to activate Sleeper from a scheduling utility.
• Sleeper osax : An AppleScript extension that allows you to use AppleScript to:
1. Query Sleeper to tell whether the disks are asleep
2. Put your Macintosh to sleep (works the same as the hotkey)
• Sleeper Now : A control strip module that tells Sleeper to put your Mac to sleep.
• Register SCS : The online registration application for paying your shareware fee.
• How to Register : A file containing detailed instructions on how to use the Register SCS application to send in your registration.
• St. Clair Software Products : A document with brief descriptions of St. Clair Software's shareware and freeware products.
Upgrading from previous versions of Sleeper:
When you upgrade from earlier versions of Sleeper, you may have to set some of your preferences again in the Sleeper control panel, including which disks you want Sleeper to control. The registration code you received when you paid for Sleeper will continue to work with this version.
Registration
Sleeper is distributed under the shareware system. If you use it, please pay the shareware fee so we can continue to provide you with quality products and support. To register, just click on the "Register..." button in the Sleeper control panel. If you need more help on using the Register SCS application to create a registration form, please see the "How to Register" file included with Sleeper.
Support
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 version and a tip sheet for Sleeper can be found at <http://www.stclairsw.com/>.
If you have any suggestions or problems to report, contact us at:
email: support@stclairsw.com
fax: +1 330-549-3495
mail: St. Clair Software
1636 E. Garfield Road
New Springfield, OH 44443
USA.
If you have Internet Config installed, you can click on the URL in the Sleeper control panel to take your browser directly to our web site.
Hints and Machine-Specific Instructions:
• Please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions section of the documentation if you:
1. have a Quadra 660AV or 840AV or a Daystar upgrade card and the screen does not dim.
2. are using both Sleeper and the shareware Eclipse screen saver and your screen does not undim all the way.
3. are confused by Sleeper reminding you about your machine's built-in energy saving features.
4. have a hard disk that spins down and then back up again when you shut down your Macintosh.
• If you have a Syquest drive, we recommend that you keep the drive sleep checkbox turned off for that disk. Because of their design, some Syquest drives may refuse to wake up from sleep, though others will work fine.
• ZIP drives will not eject at shutdown if you use Sleeper to put them to sleep and you are using version 5.0.1 of the Iomega drivers. Keeping the checkbox for the ZIP drive turned off in the Sleeper control panel avoids this problem. Note that Iomega's drivers already have a built-in sleep feature, and that earlier versions of the drivers do not exhibit this bug.
• Option-clicking on the slider controls allows you to enter settings via a dialog box, including values that the sliders won't allow.
• Sleeper will put drives to sleep when you shut down or drag disks to the trash. If this is undesirable or causes problems, you can disable this by command-option clicking on the "Help" icon in the Sleeper control panel and turning off the appropriate checkbox.
• Users who liked the Energy Star setup in Sleeper 2.1, which allowed activation of both suspended and power-off modes with different delays, can still access this feature by option-clicking on the Energy Star tab.
• Energy Star functions will not work on a Power Macintosh 6100/60 or 6100/60AV using the HDI-45 video port unless you have installed either PowerPC Enabler version 1.02 or System 7.5 (or greater).
• Apple does not recommend using Energy Star power down on AppleVision 1710AV monitors with serial numbers between SG522xxxxxx and SG536xxxxxx when they are connected to a PCI PowerMac or 3rd party video card. Users should have these displays serviced so that Energy Star mode does not damage the monitor.
• Because of hardware differences, all features are not be available on all Macintosh models. See the documentation for specific details.
Known problems:
• On PowerMac 4400's and other desktop machines with both an IDE CD-ROM and IDE hard disk, Sleeper does not currently distinguish between the CD-ROM and hard drive. Activity on the CD-ROM drive will therefore keep the hard disk awake. This will be fixed in a future release.
• When Sleeper is installed, Casa Blanca Works Drive7 version 4.0.8 does not seem to flush the cache properly on IDE drives with write-caching. This has been confirmed with a Quantum Fireball IDE drive on a Performa 6300 and reported to CBW. It does not affect SCSI drives.
• Microsoft Office Manager, an extension that comes with Microsoft Office, is reported to cause many conflicts, including some with Sleeper. Several users have reported that their Macs would not wake up from sleep if Microsoft Office Manager was installed - removing MOM fixes the problem.
• There has been one report that the External CD Audio extension for Performa 630 and 5200 machines may conflict with Sleeper.
Release Notes:
Version 3.0:
- New features:
* A password can now be required before allowing access to the screen.
* Sleeper can now shut down a Mac after it has been inactive for a specified time.
* A status area in the control panel now neatly summarizes Sleeper's settings.
* Sleeper is Kaleidoscope and Mac OS 8 Platinum savvy.
* Balloon Help is now supported.
* Sleeper now works with the Sleep menu item in the Finder's Special menu
and the Sleep button in the power-key dialog on non-PowerBook Macs.
- Enhancements to existing features:
* The actions which Sleeper performs with the hotkey are now selectable.
* Sleeper can now spin drives back up while the monitor is powering
back on from a low-power Energy Star mode.
* IDE drive support is now PPC-native on machines that have the
native ATA Manager (currently only the PowerBook 3400).
* Sleeper now warns you if you have extra screen dimming or drive sleep
features turned on in the Energy Saver or PowerBook control panels.
* Sleeper no longer spins down drives when Norton Utilities, Disk
First Aid, FWB Hard Disk Toolkit, Drive Setup, and other disk
utilities unmount them from the desktop.
- Bug fixes:
* Support is better for high-end graphics cards (Radius 24xp and derivatives).
Previously, these cards wouldn't wake up from the Energy Star "off" mode.
* IDE drives are now put into suspended mode rather than turned off
when they are spun down. This should fix wakeup problems encountered
with IDE drives formatted with some versions of Drive Setup.
* The SAVR Gestalt now also reports the screen as dimmed when Energy
Star mode is active.
* Sleeper no longer spins down the drive, then spins it back up again
when shutting down most PowerMacs running System 7.6.1 and later.
* Option clicking on the sliders could cause crashes. This has been fixed.
* The screen saver now correctly detects keyboard activity in Microsoft
Excel and Duke Nukem.
Version 2.1.1:
- Fixed a bug which caused the ATI XCLAIM VR card (and perhaps others)
to not wake up from Energy Star full power-off.
- Hotkeys using the 'A' key were incorrectly displayed.
- Added flashing LED support for the Apple Adjustable Keyboard.
- Corrected problems with saving the gamma table before dimming on
Nubus-based PowerMac AV models.
- Sleeper now spins down the system disk at shutdown if virtual memory
is provided by Ram Doubler rather than System 7 VM.
Version 2.1:
- Added cursors to show when hot corners are active, and to warn you
when the screen is about to dim.
- Added "Don't wake up for mouse movement" option for the screen saver.
- Added switches to Energy Star to allow doing "suspend", "off", or both.
- Added "Only when dimmed" option for Energy Star activation.
- Added "Sleeper Now," a control strip module to activate sleep.
- Saving and restoring the gamma table is now turned on by default.
- Sleeper now flushes the on-board cache on SCSI disks as well as the
MacOS volume buffers. This avoids possible corruption on drives with
write-caching, like the Quantum Fireball.
- You can now click on the URL at the bottom of the control panel and
go to our web site if you have Internet Config installed.
- Fixed incorrect handling of gamma tables at startup and on high-end
graphics cards.
- Fixed a bug that would fail to spin down external drives at shutdown
and when they were dragged to the trash if the disk was formatted
with FWB's Hard Disk Toolkit.
- Fixed a problem that would not allow disks formatted with Hard Disk
Toolkit 2.0.1 to spin down on some Macintoshes.
- Fixed a conflict with MPW that would cause disk spin-up to hang when
it was initiated by certain MPW commands.
Version 2.0.4:
- Added support for WakeUp Items 1.0. The about box now supports
copying of text and has a table of contents.
Version 2.0.3:
- Fixes incompatibilities with the MacPlus and Mac SE.
Version 2.0.2:
- The Sleeper control panel is unchanged, except for the version number.
This release simply corrects a mistake in the configuration of the
Register program for submitting shareware payments.
Version 2.0.1:
- Fixed a potential crash in the hotkey detection code.
- Fixed a bug which could cause crashes when dimming or undimming
the screen in a few applications.
- Fixed a bug which could cause crashes when waking up monitors
from Energy Star sleep on rare occasions.
- More defensive register preservation in Sleeper's patch code to
avoid possible conflicts. This fixes crashes when waking up SCSI
disks on some Macintoshes.
- Fixed control panel display so disabled items are gray on color
machines, not stippled.
- Added dynamic display of SCSI device names and volumes.
- Option-clicking on delay sliders allows you to set the time
by typing in the number of minutes.
- After hotkey use, screen saver will accept key clicks to wake up
even when the drives don't spin down because of disk activity.
- Enabled disk spin-down when disks are dragged to the trash or the
Mac is shut down.
- Disabled gamma table save and restore by default. Users who need
it must now turn it on explicitly.
- Removed 3D button CDEF so Aaron users will get Aaron's buttons in
Sleeper's control panel.
Version 2.0:
- New features:
* Support for IDE disk drives
* PowerMac native SCSI support
* Support for multiple SCSI buses
* Energy Star support
* Improved user interface
* Added the Sleep Now application
- Enhancements to existing features:
* Sleep/wake disks individually or all at once
* Adjustable brightness for screen saver
* Switch to turn off screen saver "hot corners"
* Use of the keyboard LEDs to indicate when attention is needed
* Prompt to turn off sleep for disks that are powered off or
disconnected
* Switched to Kagi Shareware for registration processing
- Bug fixes:
* Sleeper will no longer hang if you power up a disk drive and try
to mount it with SCSI Probe while other disks are asleep
* Sleeper now respects changes made by the Gamma control
panel
* The cursor now disappears when the screen on a PCI PowerMac
is dimmed.
- An experimental feature in Sleeper will spin down hard disks
when they're dragged to the trash or on shutdown. This can be
useful if you have external disks that you use infrequently or if
you set your Macintosh to automatically shut down and want the
external disk to spin down. You can turn this feature on by using
ResEdit to change the value in 'SStm' resource #13000 from zero
to one.
Version 1.1.5:
- The VBL task for dimming the screen is now turned off by default.
It began to present a compatibility problem in several different
configurations, so we're now playing it safe. To turn it back on,
command-option-click on the "Info" icon in the control panel.
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.
