Patent ID: 7038988

Claim:
A system for coordinating time-critical tasks in a control system for an optical disc drive for optical media with a pitted premastered area that cannot be overwritten and a grooved user-writeable area that can be overwritten, comprising: a first processor operable to communicate with a second processor; and instructions operable to control handling of a new command, a notify event, or a performance event comprising at least one of: a set of power mode state machine instructions operable to control the power mode of the optical disc drive; a set of recovery manager instructions operable to attempt recovery from an error detected while performing a command; a set of focus control state machine instructions operable to control closing focus in the optical disc drive; a set of tracking/seeking control state machine instructions operable to control closing track in the optical disc drive; a set of spin control state machine instructions operable to control the spin speed of optical media in the optical disc drive; a set of physical sector address (PSA) state machine instructions operable to determine the position of an actuator arm in relation to grooved and pitted areas in the optical media; a set of laser control state machine instructions operable to control the power mode of a laser in the optical disc drive; a set of adjust gains state machine instructions operable to adjust control system gains in the optical disc drive; a set of performance monitor state machine instructions operable to monitor the status of the time critical tasks in the second processor; and a set of monitor load/eject state machine instructions to determine whether the optical media has been loaded or ejected from the optical disc drive; wherein the first processor includes: instructions operable to wait to receive a notice of at least one of: the new command being issued to the second processor, the notify event, or the performance event; and instructions operable to control the rate at which the first processor monitors the status of time critical tasks in the second processor.