Is it possible to turn off the Amiga CD32 CD motor?

[saimo]

I never had/tried an Amiga CD32, so please excuse my ignorance in case this question is dumb.

For a certain piece of software of mine, I'd like to turn off the CD motor after all accesses to it are done (i.e. at some point the CD won't be needed anymore), to avoid that the CD keeps on spinning without reason.
I thought it would be dead easy thanks to the CD_MOTOR command of cd.device, but it turned out that it seems impossible: the friend who's testing my program reported that the light goes off, the head seems to start seeking, but then the CD keeps on spinning. I thought that maybe there was some conflict of sorts in my program, so I made a simple test program that does this:
1. opens a file on a CD and reads 4 bytes from it to ensure the CD starts spinning;
2. closes the file;
3. opens cd.device;
4. sends the CD_MOTOR command (with DoIO());
5. closes cd.device;
6. quits.

The report I got is this: "The motor stops spinning now for about 1 second before it starts again. Also, if I run it twice or more nothing happens (as in CD doesn't stop spinning again... it just spins endlessly)."
Notes:
* my friend's machine is equipped with an accelerator board, an HD, and a full AmigaOS 3.something install;
* in one of my tests, pausing for 10 seconds after sending the command and closing cd.device didn't change anything.

The cd.device autodoc doesn't suggest much, so, at this point, I wonder what I'm doing wrong, or if there are additional factors to take into account, or if the CD_MOTOR command doesn't work at all. Any clue? Thanks.

[saimo]

I take it there's no way?

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by saimo

I take it there's no way?

You can try to disable CD in CD32 boot menu, and try to boot. If this is possible then you can disable CD motor off.

[saimo]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

You can try to disable CD in CD32 boot menu, and try to boot. If this is possible then you can disable CD motor off.

Well, if I had a machine, I'd try it, but, unless I'm misunderstanding your suggestion, I don't think that would say much: the context is different, as I'd like to turn the motor off after loading stuff from CD.
After all my tests, I asked my tester whether he had ever seen the CD stopping when running other software, and he said no. So I started to think that there's no way after all. But I'd be glad if that were wrong

[Hewitson]

I think what Don_Adan is saying is that if the Early Startup is capable of disabling the motor (in software), then it would be possible for your software to do the same (after the data is loaded, obviously).

I personally wouldn't worry about the motor. It's the laser that wears out on optical drives, not the motor.

[saimo]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I think what Don_Adan is saying is that if the Early Startup is capable of disabling the motor (in software), then it would be possible for your software to do the same (after the data is loaded, obviously).

That would make for a meaningful comparison only if the motor starts spinning as soon as the machine is turned on: is that what happens?
But I'm afraid this is academic speculation: in UAE, the Early Startup Screen doesn't show CD0: (or any other device).

I personally wouldn't worry about the motor. It's the laser that wears out on optical drives, not the motor.

It's still wasted energy, possibly noise, and a minimal wear of the parts. I'd be happy if I can avoid that, but of course that isn't a showstopper.