What is the sound of one head bashing?

[rootofnewt]

I've had to replace a few failed CD drives in clones over the years. I have *never* needed to replace a CD drive in a Mac.

Until now.

Yes, the combo drive is apparently kaput. Command-E, no eject. Eject/F12, no eject. Restart/F12, no eject. Manually pop drive open with pin--yay! Insert CD and close? Oh, no. No happy spinning for me, it seems.

This is timely, as the screen was being wonky, so I figured I should back up the latest pics and budget stuff before it goes dead and has to go *back* to Apple yet again. Oh, no, no backups for me, unless I beg a friend to let me do it via another mac, treating this as an expensive hard drive. I don't have time for that, though, I don't think. Or maybe I do.

*sigh*

This is really bad timing. I might just have to buy extra memory cards for the camera.

Thing is, I was gonna make an album or two so that I don't need to worry about *real* photos when we visit relatives. Guess not.

I suppose I could hope that the Mac's CD drive just won't work when the ambient temperature is above 85F. Somehow, I doubt that.

Explain brand loyalty to me again, please?

Comments

[thauron.livejournal.com]

Ummm...it's synonymous with "Linux"? ;)

[jurisenpai.livejournal.com]

I second that. :)

[audiorapture.livejournal.com]

Any of you kids want to try explaining what a kernel has to do with hardware failures? ;-)

[thauron.livejournal.com]

Absolutely nothing. But we're talking about brand loyalty here. And I've run Linuces on Mac hardware before...blows OSX away, IMHO

[inefficiency.livejournal.com]

Explain brand loyalty to me again, please?

brand loyalty: A cocktail of chemicals that, in combination will 1) render the skin painlessly, partially porous, and 2) provide a chemical that will, once absorbed, render you ceaselessly in favor of products upon which many marketing dollars have been spent to brand collectively.

[lachupacabra.livejournal.com]

ive been an apple brand loyalist for yrs too & am also really losing faith.
:(

on the bright side, my old imac did that several times
& just ended up fixing itself. no rhyme or reason ...
the cd thingy just started working again.
weird.
;\

[krues8dr.livejournal.com]

Have you tried it on different CDs? I've discovered that there are certain discs, generally cheap burns, that just don't work with my iBook.

[annaoj.livejournal.com]

hmmm. that's happened to me a couple times, and iirc, the solution was to zap the pram.

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

my own apple fandom is less "brand loyalty" and more "lesser of two evils".

(note to linux people: i've tried four different distros on three different systems. two of them installed by self-proclaimed experts. i gave it a good college try. doesn't do it for me.)

[krasota.livejournal.com]

Aye, exactly. I ran different distros/flavors of Linux years ago. Sure, things have changed a heck of a lot since then, but I *like* MacOS. If I wanted to run something else, I would.

And this issue has nothing to do with OS and everything to do with hardware.

Incidentally, boy rebooted the machine again and now the drive is working. I'm guessing there's a bad connection on the cable/line/connection. This machine has had *two* new logic boards installed, so it stands to reason they might've screwed something up and not glued the cable down just so.

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

maybe the machine just fears boy and not you?

the gf's iMac gets uppity like that sometimes.

[seeliespright.livejournal.com]

Manually pop drive open with pin--yay!

Mine is a new Powerbook so I don't even have that. Every time it has difficulty popping out a disk or reading it, I panic since there's no way to get it out manually. Not good, but thus far, I have been able to force it to eject by holding down the button when I reboot or hitting it just as the computer is rebooting.

As far as backing up your stuff, I can send you CDs to try and burn that have worked on my Mac. Also, you mentioned Mac network or something. If I can hook up to you somehow and help let me know.

Further, I have Home Directory space online if you want me to upload things there or something.

Let me know if I can help.

[lady-lion.livejournal.com]

If I were local, I'd let you back up with one of my computers, or even my iPod. :-\ Actually, an iPod isn't such a bad idea for backup, either.

Sorry, that doesn't really solve anything, now does it?