Set Automatic Acoustic Management level on hard drives
Oct 18, '04 11:19:00AM
Contributed by: alexwegel
If you want to set the Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) feature of your hard drives, but can't use MacAAM (it's an OS 9 only application; not Classic), OpenFirmware might be the solution.
Here's my recipe for setting the primary hard drive to silent mode:
- Enter OpenFirmware by holding Command-Option-o-f at startup.
- Enter the following line:
0 0 0 here 428000 , ef , 4000 1 apply ata-command hd .
- Hit return and check the output (if it prints 0, it went OK)
- To go on booting, type mac-boot and hit return.
That's it. To apply this to another device, change the hd part of the command to the device path or alias you want (eg sd1 for the hard drive on the second SATA bus in a G5). To set a different value, change the 80 to some other dual-digit hex value in the range 80 to FE (80 = silent, FE = fast).
The bad new is that Barracuda drives don't support AAM.
[robg adds: Take care when using open firmware; you can cause some bad things to happen if you mess something up. I have not tested this hint...]
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