superdrive won't draw discs in

Same problem - now solved. Quick answer - Open Terminal and type the command drutil tray eject

Our 2009 iMac, running High Sierra, had a Superdrive that was totally unresponsive. It would not accept disks, even if they were pushed in to the point where the springy resistance is felt, when they are about three quarters of the way in. Pushing them all the way in, against the spring pressure, had no effect. The disks would be pushed out by the mechanical spring force, but the Superdrive was dead.

First, I did a System Management Controller (SMC) reset, by Shutting Down and then disconnecting the power cord from the back of the computer for a minute or so. Apple website says to allow 15 seconds. Plug the cord back in and start up. We noticed that the laggy behaviour of the iMac in general went away, which was excellent - point to remember! However, the Superdrive did not start working.

Next, I tried a PRAM reset, by holding down Command+Option+P+R at startup. The first time I did this, the iMac booted into a recovery drive. Weird. Shut down and restarted and did the PRAM reset again, five times in a sequence. No change to the Superdrive problem. Still completely unresponsive.

I googled and found suggestions to try Terminal commands, to make the Superdrive go through some ejection sequences. The command drutil eject did nothing, but then I found a suggestion to try drutil tray eject . Upon pressing Enter to run that command, I heard a click from the Superdrive. I put in a disk, it sucked it in, recognised it as a DVD, fired up DVD Player and started playing the movie. Fixed! :-)