iBook Combo drive not reading

A

av_man

Registered
I have a brand new iBook 12" 1.2GHz with Combo drive and it doesn't seem to like optical discs. Any CD or DVD that I insert spins up, makes some funny noises, then gets spit back out. If I start up with the disc in there it stays, but when the desktop starts loading I get the error "You have inserted a disc with no volumes that Mac OS X can mount" and asks me to ignore, eject, or initialize the disc. When I start Toast 6 Titanium it stays in the drive, but when I go to "Disc Info..." it says "Couldn't read the table of contents for this disc. The disc may be damaged." The only discs I've been able to read are Video DVDs (DVD-R) that I made myself. However, when they show up in the Finder they have the wrong name and the files are all named wrong. The "VIDEO_TS" folder becomes "RI@EK_PS" and VOB files become ".VKB". When I try to play the disc in DVDPlayer It plays for a few minutes and then it turns to garbled video. Has anyone experienced anything like this?
 
The Panther DVDs both get spit back out just like any other disc. I'm thinking it has to be at least partly hardware, but the disc names are garbled so there has to be a software issue as well. Whether it's two unrelated issues or the same problem I have no idea. I'll probably take it by the nearest Apple Service Center. I was just wondering if anyone else had seen the same problem. Thanks.
 
Well, I took it to the nearest Apple Service center (a fellow employee who is a licensed Apple technician) and he looked at it. He said it was caused by faulty drive firmware. He said the firmware got scrambled somehow, and proceeded to remove the battery, hold the power button for 20 seconds, then replace the battery, start it up and zap the PRAM 5 times in a row before letting it continue to boot. After it booted he stuck in a video DVD and the names were right and it played. Same for every other disc we tried.

Just thought I'd post the solution here in case anyone else runs into the same weird problem.
 
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