05.18.05
A Stuck Disc That Didn’t Exist
Just in case anyone else ever runs into this problem: a couple of days ago I found that I couldn’t insert a CD into my PowerBook’s slot drive—it stopped short exactly as it would if a disc were already in the drive. But there was no disc in the drive. Neither rebooting with the mouse button depressed nor obscure command-line wizardry could eject what wasn’t there.
Google turned up a few offhand references to a paperclippable eject button somewhere inside the CD slot (either just next to the right edge or an inch and a half from the left), but that didn’t work. But a very thin screwdriver (size 00, the same one I used to remove the tiny philips-head screws on the memory bay on the bottom of the PowerBook) inserted into the slot found the bar that was stopping the CD —which I was able to push out of the way by sweeping right to left with the screwdriver. The drive now works fine.
Of course, I don’t guarantee that you won’t permanently destroy your optical drive if you try this on your own laptop. But it worked for me.
