Hardware tests with faulty optical drive

M

marko1473

Registered
Optical drive in my PowerBook G4 12" is not working. Can I run hardware tests available on CDs which I got the machine?

If so, how can I do that? Do I need another Mac? Can I copy files to hard disk and run it then?

I've never used these tests, but would like to see what kind of response I get from the optical drive which won't load any media at all - I cannot physically put any CDs/DVDs into the drive.

Thanks in advance,
Marko
 
This might be of help - I don't know...?

I learnt a really interesting thing the other day. I had an 600MHz iMac that had a faulty CD-RW drive. Everytime you put a CD into the drive - it would be automatically spat out again. Hence - the drive was considered faulty. I had the same problem as you, being that I wanted to run a "hardware test" CD - but couldn't. Then someone alerted me to this:

> Reboot the computer while at the same time holding down the mouse button.
(I guess if you have a non-apple mouse that would mean holding down the left click button.) Apparently, doing this re-sets the CD drive.

Since then the CD-RW has worked perfectly! Like I said, I don't know if this will work for a powerbook - but worth a try...
 
Unfortunately, holding down the mouse button didn't help. I've tried (many times) many things - resetting the pmu, the pram, open firmware and many other magic key combinations - but, no luck.

It looks more and more likely that the drive suffered some kind of mechanical failure and that it needs replacing.
 
My powermac g4 has just recently broke down, I put in a cd or dvd and it wont recognise it, it just keeps on whirring and clunking and finally will spit out the disc!!!

Will try out the mouse button trick when I get home.
 
Hook up to another computer in Target Mode (boot your computer while holding down the "T" key, a blue screen will pop up) Hook it up to the other computer firewire to firewire, and ytour somputer will show up as a harddrive in the other computer. Run the CDs on that computer and select your hard drive....
 
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