[iBook] Rubber Piece ripped out of CD/DVD drive g4 ibook - now not working

[Howard Pettigrew]

Gordon, Your experience is similar to two different ones that I have  
encountered. A teacher one of the schools I work in put in a disk  
from a friend that was supposed to have photo images on it. It didn't  
mount on the desktop so couldn't be ejected in the usual manner. They  
tried holding down the mouse button on start up but still nothing. I  
used Disk Utility to show it / eject it. Turned out it had been  
formatted in some way that it just showed as a PC format with  
autoexec file - this showed on my iBook with Tiger - unsure why it  
didn't show on the teacher's. The second point is that with my own  
iBook - same as yours, I struck the same problem - 1 1/2" piece of  
black thin foam came out. After that, I could not put in a CD. I put  
up with this for ages, using an external CD rom drive when I needed a  
CD drive. I looked at taking the laptop to pieces to see if I could  
fix it but there didn't seem to be an easy solution.
Now  I would not recommend other circumstances doing what I did next!
When away on holiday in a hired camper which  had a CD player in it,  
and I was having trouble getting power for my iPod, I got desperate  
one night. I made a hook out of a paper clip, and keeping it very  
straight on so to avoid the mechanism, I had a very gentle  "fish'  
and managed to pull out the rest of the foam. I think it is actually  
a seal as my drive now works perfectly again and I have had no  
further problems.
Like I said, I wouldn't recommend this method, I think I just got  
lucky. My iBook is under 3 year warranty to our Ministry of Ed so I  
was prepared to take the risk
I now expect to get shot down by everyone on the list for posting  
this, but it worked for me!!!
Cheers
H
On 28/12/2005, at 1:30 AM, gordens wrote:

> Hi.  I have a 933 14" g4 ibook with a cd/dvd slot drive.  It's a  
> matshita - came with the ibook.
> Anyway - last night I tried to insert a CD which came with a camera  
> (windows CD).  The CD drive accepted the CD, but didn't' recognize  
> it.  When I tried to eject it using the ejection key - it didn't  
> budge.  I heard no noises.
> I restarted the ibook and held the track pad button down to  
> manually eject and it would try to eject the CD - but then would  
> pull it back in.
> The 2nd time it tried to spit the CD out - I grabbed a hold of the  
> CD and tried to pull it out.  When I did this- I tore off about a  
> 1/2" piece of a black foam pad that I assume is part of the  
> gripping mechanism for drawing the CD in.  Now the drive will not  
> accept/draw in a CD at all.
>
> Before I call apple - anyone else done this?  I was wondering if  
> anyone had thoughts on replacing this piece - or will I need to  
> replace the entire CD/DVD drive?  The Ibook - is past the 1 year  
> warranty. TIA