It happened to mine too. Call an Apple retail store and they'll hook you up with a retailer (non-apple) that can get you a new CD drive as well as bigger hard drives THAT DON'T MELT. (it happened to two of my hard drives - 30gig and 40gig)
I've used REALbasic for over a year now and I have to say, it is EASILY the BEST high level programming environment for the Macintosh. REALbasic 3.5 is stable and I've only come across one bug. ONE.