[iBook] Second Hand Mac woes

[Andy McMullin]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ibook-bounces at listserver.themacintoshguy.com [mailto:ibook-
> bounces at listserver.themacintoshguy.com] On Behalf Of Alex Santos 100MB
> Neostrada Mail
> Sent: 14 January 2005 23:40
> To: A place to discuss Apple's iBook computers.
> Subject: Re: [iBook] Second Hand Mac woes
> 
> Were you able to have the original CD ROM door fitted on the new drive?
> The Toshiba drive sound great, I wonder if this is what Apple actually
> uses.

Yes and No (which is a weird answer I know). The original door was removed
from the CD-ROM but it then required modification to work with the new
DVD/CD Drive (so is no longer original).

It needed a new hole drilled into it to match the position of the lever for
opening the drive when the iBook won't -- the hole you push a paper-clip
through to get disks out. It also required the removal of the plastic part
that gets pushed using the "old" hole. I don't have any photographs of this
but both of these should make more sense when you take the door off the
"old" drive and compare it with the "new".

It also required a bit of fiddling to fit it onto the drive properly.

I understand that the Toshiba is one of the drives Apple fitted and you can
avoid all this messing around if you get the door from a DVD/CD version of
an iBook to replace your CD version's door.

> My problem is that the iBook boots to OSX now as this is what I chose
> in the startup disk control panel in 9. But OSX presented with a login
> window and I would like to now start back from 9, otherwise with the
> CDROM not working and no password for OSX, I won't be able to do
> anything with it.

I had this sort of problem for a short while (dead CD drive but the
necessity to boot from CD media). I used a FireWire device as a boot drive
and got around it that way as a temporary fix. The only trouble is I'm not
sure what I did to get it to work! I am sure someone else on this list will
be able to help though.

Regards
Andy, G8TQH
http://www.rickham.net/