Oh that Dreaded Sudden Motion Sensor...

[nortonbeaver]

hello- this is my first post in this fine forum and i hope somebody knows something useful.

here's the issue: i am using a g4 powerbook (version 5.6) with os x 10.4.6
the computer comes with a sudden motion sensor which supposedly safes the hard drives from head crashing in case the computer should be dropped. i remember that the sensor was working all the time- now, unfortunately, it doesn't.

a quick search revealed that this problem first occurred after upgrading to 10.4.3 and can be sort of resolved by restarting the powerbook. indeed, this does the trick, even in 1.4.6... but it is somewhat impractical, because every time i turn the computer off and on i have to perform a restart if i want the sensor to do its job.

after a (warm) restart amsvisualizer shows that the motion sensor is working. i can turn it off and on in terminal. pmset -g says sms: 1 or sms: 0. after a cold start the visualizer doesn't respond to any movement and sudo pmset -a sms 1 in terminal doesn't do the trick either: pmset -g reveals that sms is set to 1 but it isn't working until i perform a warm restart.

any solutions anyone? apparently this problem has been persisting since 10.4.3 and it's something i wouldn't want my pc friends to see...

 

[GimmeSlack12]

I don't really have a solution, but do you plan on dropping the PB a lot? And you have the latest version of the AMSVisualizer (1.054)? This version is Universal so it must have been upgraded just recently. It works fine on my iBook's Sensor.

Oh well, perhaps it is just not working. Not much you can do about it.

 

[nortonbeaver]

i don't really want to drop the pb at all but i think it were nice if all features were working as promised. the amsvisualizer is the latest version by the way.

i am surprised to see that this problem has been persisting for various system updates since the sms was advertised as a huge apple innovation. apple probably doesn't expect users to actually turn the pb off.