A few weeks ago I decided to give my Cube some t.l.c. It's used fairly regularly, for web browsing, together with a highly tweaked TenFourFox - again THANKS to those contributors!
I rarely use the optical drive, but it's always bugged me that the drive (SR-8186-B) is not 100% serviceable, as (with most G4 cubes) the CD/DVD insertion is slow, and ejection very poor. I always keep a pair of tweezers (long pointed jaws protected by scotch tape) close by to serve as a manual extraction aid tool.
In fact I'm never content if any of my 'old PPC girls' are not 100% serviceable, which led me recently to pull the drive and attempt a fix.
I was guided by information read on the Cubeowner.com site, where it was stated that many attempts to modify the drive rollers apparently ended in failure. The main cause for poor ejection being the rubber rollers spinning on their guide rails. A tutorial on the same site indicated that a solution was found in removing both halves of the tapered rubber rollers from their guides, fitting heat-shrink tubing close to each ends of the roller guide, refitting the original rollers, then adding a further section of slightly larger diameter heat-shrink tubing in the centre area (as an aid to CD insertion).
I succeeded in refitting both tapered rollers over the first 2 sections of heat-shrink tubing (difficult), and then getting the larger piece of heat-shrink tubing fitted in the centre over the rest of the assembly. However a subsequent power-up test showed no improvement. Automatic insertion of a CD was still sluggish, and the ejection still poor, necessitating use of tweezers to pull the CD from the slot.
I again disassembled the drive, removed the sleeves I'd fitted, re-measured/re-recut new pieces of heat-sleeving, and re-installed. Again the result gave no improvement, which was a surprise, as the original author of the tutorial had stated it appeared to be an efficient fix.
Fitting both innermost parts of added sleeving was straight forward. Sliding both tapered rubber rollers over this was difficult, as their tight inner diameter had a tendance to slightly deform the inner sleeves.
So this post really serves as an SOS request to anyone who may have succeeded with this, or advise on some other proved modification to the rollers.
I rarely use the optical drive, but it's always bugged me that the drive (SR-8186-B) is not 100% serviceable, as (with most G4 cubes) the CD/DVD insertion is slow, and ejection very poor. I always keep a pair of tweezers (long pointed jaws protected by scotch tape) close by to serve as a manual extraction aid tool.
In fact I'm never content if any of my 'old PPC girls' are not 100% serviceable, which led me recently to pull the drive and attempt a fix.
I was guided by information read on the Cubeowner.com site, where it was stated that many attempts to modify the drive rollers apparently ended in failure. The main cause for poor ejection being the rubber rollers spinning on their guide rails. A tutorial on the same site indicated that a solution was found in removing both halves of the tapered rubber rollers from their guides, fitting heat-shrink tubing close to each ends of the roller guide, refitting the original rollers, then adding a further section of slightly larger diameter heat-shrink tubing in the centre area (as an aid to CD insertion).
I succeeded in refitting both tapered rollers over the first 2 sections of heat-shrink tubing (difficult), and then getting the larger piece of heat-shrink tubing fitted in the centre over the rest of the assembly. However a subsequent power-up test showed no improvement. Automatic insertion of a CD was still sluggish, and the ejection still poor, necessitating use of tweezers to pull the CD from the slot.
I again disassembled the drive, removed the sleeves I'd fitted, re-measured/re-recut new pieces of heat-sleeving, and re-installed. Again the result gave no improvement, which was a surprise, as the original author of the tutorial had stated it appeared to be an efficient fix.
Fitting both innermost parts of added sleeving was straight forward. Sliding both tapered rubber rollers over this was difficult, as their tight inner diameter had a tendance to slightly deform the inner sleeves.
So this post really serves as an SOS request to anyone who may have succeeded with this, or advise on some other proved modification to the rollers.
