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CD drive won't mount

B

Brindlebutt

macrumors newbie
Original poster
My G4 starts up fine from the hard drive. It just doesn't see the CD drive. Never shows up on desktop. I restarted with option key down, but it never shows up.

I checked seatings of cords -- seem to be in there okay. Neither System disk, or data disk, or audio disks show up.

Power supply appears to be working, as it winks in a pulse-like fashion during start-up, then just stops.

Could this be a software problem? Is there something in System Profile I should look at, i.e. extensions?

Advice?
 
Bring up the System Profiler and see if the drive is showing up on the ATA bus at all--it should at least be visible there.

If it's not, either the drive is dead or you have a bad cable (rare, but I've seen it once). I suppose it could also be the port on the motherboard--try plugging it in where the hard drive's cable usually goes--worth a shot. I'd tell you to check the jumpers, but I'm assuming you didn't mess with those recently, if ever.

If it does show up in System Profiler, that means that your G4 is at least talking to it, and it's giving a basic response, although the diagnosis is probably the same--dead drive or MAYBE bad cable, but that's less likely if discs don't show up at all--I'd expect a bad cable to either make the drive not show up at all or just cause errors while using it. You might try cleaning it--it could be a dirty laser lens, although I doubt it.

On the bright side, you can get a brand-new DVD-RW drive for under $40, so it's not an expensive fix.
 
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