optical drive frustration

[John Lee]

Hi,

I have been experiencing some audio cd frustration with my 12.1" iBook
2002 (16MB VRAM). I cannot seem to get audio CDs to play without
crackling, hissing, and popping from either the internal CD drive or an
external firewire CD burner (Yamaha unit).

I am running MacOS X 10.2.8. There is a 256MB SODIMM in the RAM
expansion slot, but I have ruled that out as the culprit (pulled it,
and ran the computer. still got the strange noises). The next thing I'm
going to try is a clean format and install once I finish up the project
I'm in the middle of.

I suspect that one possible source of the problem could be the internal
CD drive, which has never worked properly. As a last resort, I may open
up the computer and poke around inside (no more warranty left). Could a
malfunctioning drive cause such problems? I suppose another culprit
could be an impending logic board failure. :-/

Has anyone else experience such symptoms with audio CDs? Data CDs seem
to work fine for the most part, though occasionally the drives have
problems reading and mounting the CD; particularly the internal drive.
It's just an overall bad situation, as I even have problems booting
from the install and hardware test CDs on the internal drive, and the
computer semes to not want to boot off the external CD burner. Any
suggestions, or am I in for a new computer purchase?

Thanks for your help,
John B. Lee

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