[iBook] HD & CD drive replacements

[Joy Freeman]

I just replaced the hard drive in my husband's 12" G3 iBook. Now I can't get
it to boot from a CD; it just spits it back out. Turns out he's been having
problem with the CD drive (a SuperDrive, I think), too. If I'd realized it
was also bad, I would have replaced the CD drive at the same time.

So now I'm looking for CD drives, figuring there are probably lots of cheap
pulls out there, but I don't know what I need to know to ID one that would
definitely work for an iBook unless someone tells me it was pulled from an
identical machine. Anyone know of an online source of basic optical drive
knowledge? 

Anyway, until we get a new CD drive, could we load OSX on the new hard drive
using one of our other Macs via firewire disk mode? (I was able to "look at"
the new drive with the Disk Utility app on a second iBook by using firewire
disk mode.) Or would an external CD drive be better? Any better ideas?

Thanks for any advice,

Joy
--who actually loves taking our iBooks apart, but would rather do it as few
times as possible to make them work

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Joy Freeman
~ from manuscript to bound book ~
Editorial, Design, and Production Services
joy at pagesbyjoy.com