[iBook] Matshita disappeared

[Tony Gamble]

I was watching a burned DVD last evening while performing a couple of  
other light tasks (transfering files via firewire), when suddenly the  
image froze and I had to force quit DVD player app.  I then  
discovered that I could not eject the disc, so I restarted... only to  
discover that I still could not eject the disc.  I tried everything I  
could think of: eject from Disk Utility, from Terminal, from Open  
Firmware, holding trackpad click on boot... even went as far as  
resetting PRAM, NVRAM and PMU.  All the while, the drive wouldn't  
even show up in the System Profiler, although on every restart I can  
hear it spin up and otherwise physically function.

Drive is a Matshita in an iBook G4/1.42Ghz running 10.4.3.

Anybody trip over this problem before?  Fortunately, I'm still under  
warranty.

Tony