pinto2 TraceSPTI: A Concise Beginners Introduction and Guide
1. Introduction TraceSPTI has been around for a while now. However not all that many users, so far have noticed the full implications and advantages of this little tool. It can be used on all Windows Operating Systems to trace SPTI (SCSI Pass-Through Interface) with drives and controllers ie. activities, sending, interacting and receiving CDB data. In this brief introduction and guide, I intend only try to get you started with this program. There is far to much to learn for all of us, so it is not my intention to go into any great detail, technicality or explanations. If you want to learn more about SPTI, SCSI, CDB aso. then this is not the time or place. When we are talking about (optical) drives in general, there are other tools that will perform similar tasks. One free example is PlScsi, but that’s another story. I hope that you understand fully the following, because all this will be kept very basic. Note, on some drives like Pioneer you’ll also have to kill ASPI layer completely. (080217, my thanks to ala42)
2. Download and install TraceSPTI You’ll find some basic information and a download link in this thread at cdfreaks forum. Once downloaded, unzip to new folder. Then execute Setup TraceSpti.exe.
When the program installation is complete. Go to your program folder; ie My Computer- C:\ - Program Files – TraceSPTI. If you like you can make a shortcut to your desktop for SptiSrv.exe.
3. Prepare for action/tracing The author of this program has some words of advice, so I recommend you read the ReadMe file. After having done that, we'll continue to the "setup" of SptiHook.ini.
3.a Before you begin with tracing you have to tell TraceSpti what program/-s you want to trace. Double click SptiHook.ini file and it will open in Notepad (see bellow)
Under the heading Scope. Add the programs you want to trace at the end of the line Hook= . You can add as many programs you want, all that is required is that they must be able to run under SPTI. Note though, for example Nero CD-DVD Speed runs under (Nero) aspi. Therefore TraceSPTI cannot be used with this type of application. After you type your apps (without .exe extention). Save the changes in SptiHook.ini and exit.
3.b Execute SptiSrv.exe, a TraceSpti icon will now appear near clock at bottom of your screen. A new file, SptiHook.log has been created and now it's time for action!
Q. How do I know TraceSPTI really is running? A. Just open TraceSpti program folder again and you’ll see file named; SptiHook.log growing quite a lot after you execute a program you added to SptiHook.ini. (-; Exit TraceSPTI program folder.
4. Examples of tracing In my two examples I’ll use DVD InfoPro and QSuite. -DVD InfoPro, DiscInfo You can see in picture below DVD InfoPro got traced and when I click on Media Info in that program, I get a SptiHook log file in size of +500kB.
- QSuite, SolidBurn display learned media Fire up TraceSPTI first, then run QSuite. If there is any media learned in eeprom, this will show-up at end of the SptiHook logfile.
Sidenote. Remember, you can edit SptiHook log file in same way as any other notepad file, after each action/trace. This way it’s easier to keep control on what is traced a certain time. Logfile doesn’t create any time stamp, so as mentioned you can edit this file.  At this point add whatever info you may need for future reference (including day/date/time).
A big thank you to r-man the author of TraceSPTI. I also thank zebadee for help with title, spelling and grammar. Happy tracing and thanks for your attention. /pinto2
Revisions
Date	revision	action	sign
2006-05-18	1.0.1	Changed title, spelling and grammar	Thanks to zebadee at CDFreaks.com
2006-05-17	1.0.0	Created "on the fly"