ejecting jammed cd in powerbook

J

joestriker

Registered
I posted this question a while ago with no help at the end so i'm trying again. Basically i have a powerbook 12" and i have a cd stuck in the drive. when i eject it comes out half way and jams forcing it to go back inside. Pretty much its been stuck in there for about a couple of months now and its driving me nuts. I'm relying on a spare external rom which i bought but i cant carry it around with me forever. I cannot take it to a mac specialist because we dont have any in my country...i'm in zimbabwe by the way...so basically i want to know if there is any way i can get the cd out, any way i can open up my laptop safely detail by detail, or should i drop my laptop and hope for the best? I'm open to all suggestions. thanks
 
It is a bit drastic, but the onyl way I can think of is to try and eject it on battery power and when it gets half way out force the Mac to shutdown by removing the battery before it can pull the CD back in.
 
sorry that didnt work, i think i need to open my laptop so i can see into the drive. Has anyone ever opened their laptops or know how to open them safely? i once saw a site that had a detail by detail description with actual pictures illustrating how to open up a 12" powerbook but i cant remember which site it was.
 
Shut down the computer and start up whilst holding down the mouse button. This may take some time, but keep your finger on the mouse button right up until the disc comes out or the computer has started up.

or if that doesnt work try booting to open firmware

Restart the computer while holding down command-option-o-f, to enter the open firmware dialogue. At the command promp, enter "eject cd" without the quotes, and press return. The disk will pop out. Then type "mac-boot" without the quotes. Press return, and the computer will continue the startup.
 
Sounds like a physical problem with the drive -- something is catching on the inside and the only way to resolve it is to open up the computer, remove the CD drive and then open the CD drive to see if you can figure out what's wrong with it. I have seen and solved this problem in a 17" PowerBook without replacing the drive. Just make sure you're keep very good track of all of your screws. I usually take several pieces of paper, draw out a rough sketch of the layers as I'm removing them (separate sheets of paper) then tape the screws down to the drawing as I'm removing them.
 
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