Patent ID: 7760601

Claim:
A reproducing apparatus with a built-in optical disk drive including a spindle motor to rotate an optical disk and an optical pickup to emit a laser beam for reproducing information recorded on the optical disk and to receive a reflected light from the optical disk, said reproducing apparatus comprising: a driver that outputs a drive voltage to said spindle motor; a comparator that compares voltages produced at both terminals of said spindle motor, outputs LOW when a voltage to rotate the spindle motor in a direction of reading the disk is inputted, outputs HIGH when a voltage of said spindle-motor brake pulse is inputted to said spindle motor, keeps outputting at the same level as the one immediately before a suspension when the input of the voltage is suspended for a predetermined time, and then outputs LOW; and a control integrated circuit (IC) including a counter that outputs a control signal to control the output of the drive voltage of said driver while receiving the output from said comparator at a general purpose input output (GPIO) and outputs a voltage as a base of said drive voltage to said driver, said control IC stops said spindle motor by controlling said driver, resets said counter, and waits a predetermined time after controlling said driver and rotating said spindle motor at a predetermined rotation rate in a positive direction; said control IC repeatedly supplies brake pulses to said spindle motor until said spindle motor stops; said control IC counts the number of times said brake pulses are supplied with said counter; said control IC determines that said spindle motor is stopped if it detects HIGH in a predetermined time after said brake pulses are inputted; and wherein, while said spindle motor is stopped, said control IC determines that an optical disk is not mounted when the value of said counter is smaller than a threshold value, determines that the optical disk is mounted when the value of said counter is equal to or larger than the threshold value and smaller than a predetermined upper-limit number of times, and determines that said spindle motor is out of working order when the counter is equal to or larger than the predetermined upper-limit number of times.