Invisible Combo Drive on G4 iBook

[firetail]

I've got a G4 iBook with a combo drive that is driving me crazy.

Soon after I bought it (about a month and a half ago), the Combo Drive 'disappeared', becoming invisible on the finder and system preferences. By invisible, I mean that I couldn't find anywhere on the system that acknowledged it was connected.

I took it to the Apple Store and they took just 25 days to replace the drive. When I got it home, it worked for a couple of hours and then disappeared again.

So now I have the same problem as before, only this time I have a CD stuck in there.

I can hear the drive spinning at startup and I've tried the 'open firmware' and 'eject cd' option, but this doesn't work because it doesn't recognise that the drive is there.

What do I do? Is there a software fix? Or is it a hardware problem that I need to take back to the store? It's practically a brand new machine, given that for half the time I've had it, it's been sitting in the Apple store's repair centre.

 

[PCMacUser]

I've got a G4 iBook with a combo drive that is driving me crazy.

Soon after I bought it (about a month and a half ago), the Combo Drive 'disappeared', becoming invisible on the finder and system preferences. By invisible, I mean that I couldn't find anywhere on the system that acknowledged it was connected.

I took it to the Apple Store and they took just 25 days to replace the drive. When I got it home, it worked for a couple of hours and then disappeared again.

So now I have the same problem as before, only this time I have a CD stuck in there.

I can hear the drive spinning at startup and I've tried the 'open firmware' and 'eject cd' option, but this doesn't work because it doesn't recognise that the drive is there.

What do I do? Is there a software fix? Or is it a hardware problem that I need to take back to the store? It's practically a brand new machine, given that for half the time I've had it, it's been sitting in the Apple store's repair centre.

I'm not familiar with this exact problem, but a technique I use at work for stuck CDs is to power on the Mac with the mouse button held in. This ejects all drives connected to the computer. Give it a go and let us know how it goes.

 

[firetail]

Thanks.
I tried that, but I think the problem is that it doesn't recognise the drive is connected in the first place. The 'Open Firmware' trick is described as the 'if all else fails' version of that solution.

 

[aquajet]

All you can really do is bring it back and tell them to fix it right this time or give you a new one. That sucks you were without it for 25 days

 

[firetail]

What's worse is that I'm going to go into the Apple store and raise hell about how my laptop is vital for my work. Then they're going to discover that the CD stuck in there is Football Manager 06