Patent ID: 7106537

Claim:
A disk drive comprising: (a) a disk comprising a plurality of tracks and a plurality of servo sectors; (b) an actuator arm; (c) a head coupled to a distal end of the actuator arm; (d) a voice coil motor (VCM) actuator for rotating the actuator arm about a pivot to actuate the head radially over the disk; (e) a power driver for generating at least one actuator signal applied to the VCM actuator; (f) a serial communication circuit for communicating with the power driver; (g) a microprocessor; (h) at least one control component for periodically generating a control signal, wherein the control signal is transmitted at a substantially constant periodic interval using the serial communication circuit; (i) a timer for timing the periodic interval; and (j) a job queue controller for arbitrating serial communication requests to access the power driver using the serial communication circuit, wherein: the serial communication requests include a request to transmit the control signal; the serial communication requests include serial communication requests generated by the microprocessor; and the job queue controller services a communication request generated by the microprocessor if the communication request can be serviced before the timer expires.