CD/DVD Combo drive Reset

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Level 4

1,780 points

CD/DVD Combo drive Reset

My powerbook of 3+ years all of a sudden today decided to not accept any cds/dvds anymore

its like the drive is stuck in eject mode. Its a slot loading 1ghz 12" al powerbook.

Anyone know of a step to take to figure this one out. Ive had apple store look at it but since im beyond my warranty its going to be 300+$ for a repair/replace!!!

pbfixit shows me how to get at the drive, but im wondering if there is some way to "reset" the drive and maybe get it to work again.

thought are appreciated

G4 1.25Dual, Powerbook, iBook 1.2, Shuffle 1G, Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Posted on Mar 10, 2006 7:20 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 10, 2006 10:39 PM in response to Aaron Ernst

Did you already try a reboot and holding the mouse button during boot up?

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Answer 2

Aaron Ernst Author

Level 4

1,780 points

Mar 11, 2006 9:17 AM in response to Daniel Seiler

I did and there was no change. Its almost as if one day the drive just stopped working. I know for a fact that on wednesday of last week it was working just fine, i ejected the disc i was using and then now this.

Is there any other means of resetting a hardware optical drive?? or does this sound like it needs to be replaced?

I am pretty good with repairs and have no problem replacing it myself if it wasnt for the snapping off the keyboard part of these powerbooks via removal of 4 buttons.

Does anyone know if those buttons come off easily and are replaced just as easily?

Just makes me a little queezy to be popping off keyboard buttons.

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Answer 3

Mar 11, 2006 9:57 AM in response to Aaron Ernst

So did you check what the systemprofiler says about the drive?

Or do you have something like TechTools to check the drive?

Well, actually this could really sound like a hardware defect. 😟

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Answer 4

Aaron Ernst Author

Level 4

1,780 points

Mar 11, 2006 11:35 AM in response to Daniel Seiler

everything shows it as being detected, toast detects it, hardware profile shows the drive as being there.

i just cant put anything into it - ie the mechanism that retracts the disks seems to not be engaging.

what should a restart with mouse button depressed do? because it doesnt seem to do anything special

im afraid you are right and that the drive has just decided to not work anymore!

cant do techtool because i cant get the cd into the comp!!!!, nor hardware cd or any cd for that matter!

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Answer 5

Mar 11, 2006 12:58 PM in response to Aaron Ernst

Uuuh, this sounds bad indeed. I think this is a hardware defect then.

Actually the mouse button hold on startup forces the ejecting mechanism to work. So i thougt that this would maybe sort of unlock the mechanism as well, or kind of "initialize" it. But seems to be not the case.

I think you will have to repair/replace the drive 😟

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Answer 6

Mar 11, 2006 4:54 PM in response to Aaron Ernst

Is there any other means of resetting a hardware
optical drive??

I'm not confident this will work but it's worth a try, it certainly won't damage your machine. Boot into Open Firmware ("Command + Option + O + F" on startup chime) and run 'reset-nvram' followed by 'reset-all'. Then boot into OS X by typing 'mac-boot'.

If this doesn't work boot into Open Firmware again and run 'eject cd' followed by 'mac-boot'.

You could also try forcing OS X to accept that the drive isn't in use by following the instructions here, however they do assume that a disk is stuck in the drive.

Matt

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Answer 7

Aaron Ernst Author

Level 4

1,780 points

Mar 11, 2006 6:03 PM in response to Matt Peacock

ill give it a go and see what happens and will post back here with the results

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Answer 8

Aaron Ernst Author

Level 4

1,780 points

Mar 11, 2006 6:21 PM in response to Aaron Ernst

well i tried the terminal means, but there is no disk in my drive so there is nothing to eject. My problem is that i cant get any disks to go into the drive, it doesnt "suck" them in anymore. When trying to laod its almost as if the drive has been offset beause the disk is pushed to one side and it feels "locked" when i try to load it

i dont want to try reset all because i dont know what I am resetting, will I loose information, my drive be erased etc?

I cant afford to loose info and not be able to get an installer disc into this mac!!!!

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Answer 9

Mar 11, 2006 10:32 PM in response to Aaron Ernst

Aaron, what you describe sounds like a hardware issue. It's not about the mac not reading a disc or so, you simply can't insert the disc into the slot. This is because the mechanics of the drive seem to be stuck or damaged.
So i don't know if you can repair it or if you need to replace it, but i am sure youu can only solve this problem by repairing the hardware.

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Answer 10

Aaron Ernst Author

Level 4

1,780 points

Mar 12, 2006 7:47 AM in response to Daniel Seiler

i completely agree
thanks for all your help everyone.

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Answer 11

Mar 12, 2006 7:53 AM in response to Aaron Ernst

You are welcome 😉

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