Here's a weird one ... the original optical drive in my G4 had been dying for a while - it would only respond to "eject" commands if there was a disc in the drive. If I inadvertently closed the drive without a disc, it would refuse to eject. It tried. It made a little motor sound, like it was trying to eject, then it gave up with an even smaller motor sound. Only jockeying with a spoon handle in the mouth of the drive while hitting the ejct button could (after some time) convince the tray to eject. Inconvenient, you'll agree.
In all of this, the drive read an inserted CD or DVD just fine. I was pretty sure it was just a mechanical problem.
So, I thought I'd upgrade to a superdrive and bought an NEC AD-5170A and installed it in the lower bay, keeping the ailing Combo-Drive in the upper bay. I reset the jumpers of both drives to cable-select, and off I went.
Both drive functioned just fine (as long as I remembered to leave a disc in the combo-drive).
But after a few weeks, I got a bit fed up with having to have a disc in the combo drive and, reasoning that as the NEC was working just fine, I'd buy another and replace the sick combo-crive, again setting the jumper to cable-select.
That's when the problems started.
After importing a CD to iTunes, i found that I coundn't eject the CD, either via the iTunes eject button, the keyboard eject button, the top menu eject menu or dragging the disc to the trash. In fact, dragging the disc to the trash would make the disc disappear from the desktop (but not eject).
Then trying to start up Disk Utility would cause DU to hang. Equally, starting Toast would cause Toast to hang. Neither could be quit as the programs were unresponsive and the Force Quit utility couldn't force them to quit either.
Finally, the only solution was to force a restart.
The disc could then be ejected. Maybe. But even if the disc did eject, the whole thing would start again next time I put a disk in, did soemthing with it and tried to eject it.
Thinking it was perhaps a Finder (or System software) problem, I reinstalled the OS in place. Didn't fix it.
Now I'm looking at a whole clean system install, but that kills a whole day of my weekend, and I rather not have to do that.
Now I've noticed that if I switch on either on my external hard drives, they're not recognised by the system, whether the machine is running or if they're switched on before booting up (one's a USB2 hard drive, one's a Firewire).
Has anyone come across a problem like this, and are there any recommended fixes (short of a complete scorched earth reinstall?
peck2000
G4 Dual 1.25Gb Mirror Door, 1Gb RAM, 2x120Gb HD, 1x300Gb HD
In all of this, the drive read an inserted CD or DVD just fine. I was pretty sure it was just a mechanical problem.
So, I thought I'd upgrade to a superdrive and bought an NEC AD-5170A and installed it in the lower bay, keeping the ailing Combo-Drive in the upper bay. I reset the jumpers of both drives to cable-select, and off I went.
Both drive functioned just fine (as long as I remembered to leave a disc in the combo-drive).
But after a few weeks, I got a bit fed up with having to have a disc in the combo drive and, reasoning that as the NEC was working just fine, I'd buy another and replace the sick combo-crive, again setting the jumper to cable-select.
That's when the problems started.
After importing a CD to iTunes, i found that I coundn't eject the CD, either via the iTunes eject button, the keyboard eject button, the top menu eject menu or dragging the disc to the trash. In fact, dragging the disc to the trash would make the disc disappear from the desktop (but not eject).
Then trying to start up Disk Utility would cause DU to hang. Equally, starting Toast would cause Toast to hang. Neither could be quit as the programs were unresponsive and the Force Quit utility couldn't force them to quit either.
Finally, the only solution was to force a restart.
The disc could then be ejected. Maybe. But even if the disc did eject, the whole thing would start again next time I put a disk in, did soemthing with it and tried to eject it.
Thinking it was perhaps a Finder (or System software) problem, I reinstalled the OS in place. Didn't fix it.
Now I'm looking at a whole clean system install, but that kills a whole day of my weekend, and I rather not have to do that.
Now I've noticed that if I switch on either on my external hard drives, they're not recognised by the system, whether the machine is running or if they're switched on before booting up (one's a USB2 hard drive, one's a Firewire).
Has anyone come across a problem like this, and are there any recommended fixes (short of a complete scorched earth reinstall?
peck2000
G4 Dual 1.25Gb Mirror Door, 1Gb RAM, 2x120Gb HD, 1x300Gb HD
