Combo drive unpleasantness

[Declan A Rieb]

On my 667 MHz machine, with a

"Manufacturer:	MATSHITA
   Model:	MATSHITA CD-RW CW-8121
   Revision:	AA21"
  Combo drive. I've recently (a few months) been having trouble loading 
CD-R and CD-RW discs… the drive sort-of spins, it sounds like the sled 
is moving back and forth, and after a prolonged period of this (up to 
two minutes) the drive spits out the disc without mounting it. 
Depending upon my patience, this can recur up to ten times. Then the 
disc is accepted (or I quit) and things seem to work fine... but the 
first insertion is almost always bad. I've encountered no problems with 
CD-ROM (pressed discs).

Once a CD-R or -RW is accepted, and I try to write to it, the write 
(using Finder's Burn) seems to go fine. At finish or verify time, the 
write quits, indicating an error occurred, and the drive spits out the 
disc. Drat. But when the disc is placed in my old G3 PB... the write 
worked (AFAICT, correctly!)

I fear the drive is at fault. Have others had this experience? How'd 
you get it fixed?

I've tried several brands of media, but the same thing occurs so far.
If the drive were just dirty, is there an appropriate cleaning agent?
If it's just a flaky drive, it's well out of warranty. Is there a 
decent repair/replace possibility?