# Help: eMac optical drive not working!



## Saturniid19 (Jun 17, 2006)

I have an eMac that I got in 2003 and it has been a great computer.  Recently, however, the combo CD/DVD drive simply stopped working.  Pressing the eject button on the keyboard does nothing.  Every few minutes I get this message: "Burning the disc failed because this type of CD is not supported. (Error code 0x80020043)", even when there is no disc in the drive (this got pretty annoying, so I changed some preferences and now it only happens on startup).  The "restart while pressing mouse button/shift key" method no longer works.  Manually extracting the tray with a paper clip and inserting a disc doesn't work either.  I can hear the drive trying to open sometimes, so I have to assume this is some sort of mechanical problem.

It's not a big enough deal that I have to scrap the whole computer, and I've gotten along pretty well for a few weeks without the drive.  Is there anything I might be able to do at home, or should I take it to be repaired?


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## camgangrel21 (Jun 18, 2006)

FYI Take a look at a old G3 iMac jast have someone that knows what there doing do it for you.
It is all to EZ to mass up the mac if you push on something that need to be pried on.


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## just4funuk (Jun 20, 2006)

Dont scrap machine just because the CD drive wont work.(Im using an Imac A 233Mhz with the monitor faulty just using external monitor dont get me wrong would pref to use internal monitor and Will be as soon as I can source bits to get it up and running cheap enough I will).

If you feel brave you could source a replacement drive new or used then why not open Imac disconnected CDrom drive and install new sourced drive or if you cant source an original drive then disconnect internal drive and just source an external drive that is mac campatiable and connects via USB.

Sure there will be a walk through available on the net some where for you to help strip your  version of Imac. As long as the logic Board is easily seperated from the Monitor section like on the Earlyer Imac's chances of electrical shock should be very little.(Dont recommend entering monitor section of imac.Just logic board section is all you need to be able to get at) on the imac A 233Mhz  it took just 3 screws and couple of cables needed disconnecting and logic board with cdrom/hardrive could be removed from unit and then harddrive and cdrom could then be removed from logic board section after removing couple more screws and cables.But recommend you back up your data first.

If your just going to scrap it what you got to loose.


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## just4funuk (Jun 20, 2006)

The dismantling is different from my version of imac's to your emac after seeing this link 

http://www.wilko.com/emac/

*Only you know if you feel safe doing this if you do not * .


Then think you should do what previous post suggested and get someone to do it for you.


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## Saturniid19 (Jun 20, 2006)

Thanks for the input, guys!


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## sbiehle (Aug 29, 2006)

Hi, I am running an eMac and started experiencing the same issue recently.  Did you ever solve this problem, save replacing the drive?

  Machine Model:	eMac
  CPU Type:	PowerPC G4  (2.1)
  Number Of CPUs:	1
  CPU Speed:	700 MHz
  L2 Cache (per CPU):	256 KB
  Memory:	512 MB
  Bus Speed:	100 MHz
  Boot ROM Version:	4.4.2f1


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