1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information recording medium drive control apparatus applied to an information processing apparatus provided with a drive that allows the change of information recording mediums.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, information processing apparatuses, such as portable computers, incorporating CD-ROM (Compact Disc Read-Only Memories) drivers have been popularized. CD-ROMs that are capable of driving optical disc drives provided in such information processing apparatuses include music CD-ROMs, photo CD-ROMs, video CD-ROMs, video-game CD-ROMs, car navigation CD-ROMs, and movie CD-ROMs.
Since these CD-ROMs each have the information recorded in a different format, to read the information from a CD-ROM requires a player compatible with the format of the CD-ROM. To meet this requirement, some commercially available information processing apparatuses of recent date are provided with several types of players so that various types of CD-ROMs can be played back. These players are offered in software form and normally consist of application program modules.
Referring to a flowchart in FIG. 1, the process of playing back a CD-ROM will be explained.
First, to play back a CD-ROM, the user chooses item "CD" on the screen of a display (step A1). This causes a selection menu for prompting the user to choose the type of a CD-ROM to appear on the screen of the display (step A2). The selection menu contains various items including music, photo, video, game, car navigation, and movie, for example. If the user chooses "PHOTO," for example (step A3), the photo player (application program) stored in a ROM or the like is loaded into a main memory (step A4).
Next, the user inserts a photo CD-ROM into the drive of the electronic apparatus (step A5). The drive drives the CD-ROM automatically and brings it in steady rotation (step A6). Then, the photo player performs the playback process by reading the information from the CD-ROM (step A7).
As seen from the processing flow, to play back the desired CD-ROM, the user has to choose a suitable one from the players. Because of this, the user feels that the selection of a player is troublesome. In a case where playback must be performed rapidly, the user may feel that it takes a long time to complete the selection.
Furthermore, after the selection of the player has finished, the user does not necessarily insert a suitable CD-ROM into the drive. Because the user might insert the wrong CD-ROM by mistake, he or she is always nervous when inserting a CD-ROM, worrying about making a mistake. If the wrong type of CD-ROM is inserted, malfunction may result. When a malfunction has occurred or the playback has not been performed due to the insertion of the wrong type of CD-ROM, the user may waste time until the cause of the malfunction has been corrected.
Recently, DVDs (digital video discs), whose specification differs from that of conventional CDs, have begun coming onto the market. The types of information recording mediums dealt with by personal computers or the like are expected to increase in number. With many types of players being available, the user will have to choose a suitable one from the many types of players, he or she is more liable to choose the wrong player by mistake, making the selection work more troublesome.
To overcome these problems, there have been demands for the techniques for, when an information recording medium is played back, automatically choosing a player compatible with the type of the information recording medium inserted in the drive without the user choosing the player.
Now, the process of changing the CD-ROM being played back will be described.
The photo player is now playing back a photo CD-ROM (step B1). To change the photo CD-ROM to a music CD-ROM, the us e r stops the playback operation of the photo player (step B2) and ejects the photo CD-ROM from the drive (step B3). The user chooses the music player corresponding to music CD-ROMs (step B4) and inserts a music CD-ROM into the drive (step B5). This causes the music player to play back the music CD-ROM (step B6).
As seen from the processing flow, to change the photo CD-ROM, the user must stop the playback operation of the photo player. If the user does not stop the player or carries out an operation different from the stop operation by mistake, the following problem will arise. Even after the photo CD-ROM has been changed to a music CD-ROM, the photo player keeps playing pack as it has done. This permits the music player and photo player to read the information from the music CD-ROM at the same time, resulting in malfunction.
To overcome this problem, there have been demands for the techniques for, when an information recording medium being played back is changed, automatically stopping t he player corresponding to the information recording medium ejected from the drive without the user stopping the player.