Powerbook Pismo CD drive problem

etntt

Registered
I have been setting up a Pismo 400MHz/320MB RAM/6GB HD for a friend. It is running Panther 10.3.9 and everything is working fine except for the CD/DVD ROM drive.

It is playing DVDs and Audio CDs, but for some reason won't have anything to do ordinary data CDs. The icons for data CDs do not come up on the desktop. I can hear the CD drive spinning, trying to read the CD, then stop, then after a while start again. This sometimes seems to go on indefinately, other times nothing at all happens after the first attempt to read the CD, and sometimes the computer freezes.

The eject option under the File menu always remains greyed out and the only way to eject the CD is to do it manually by poking something in the little hole in the drive.

I have just updated the machine to 10.3.9 (from 10.3.3 I think), it has the latest appropriate version of firmware, I have repaired Permissions, run Disk Utility and Disk Warrior.

I have also booted the machine from my iBook in target disk mode running 10.2.8 and 9.2.2, but it made no difference.

If anyone has any ideas, I would appreciate your help.

etntt
 
I had a clamshell iBook with a 24X CDROM drive which would play Audio CD's but couldn't read data CD's. Your lens may need to be cleaned, but I'm guessing the drive is bad. Clean the lens and any data CD's you want to test and hope for the best. If that doesn't fix it, you need a replacement drive for the Pismo.
 
Is it the original drive that came with the PowerBook? If so, do you know the model of the drive?
 
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