The problem:
When I was back in Europe to visit my parents I installed macos x on their laptops (a lombard and pismo). The pismo works perfectly. The lombard is having issues. I sent a cd I burnt on my tibook to my dad with some software on it, but the CD was not recognized by the lombard. It just was spinning but not popping up on his desktop. This is what I did to troubleshoot:
1. Reset the pram, restarted
2. Tried his cd module in the pismo - worked perfectly
3. Tried the pismo cd module in the lombard - did not work (even though it worked in the pismo) - same problem.
4. inserted an audio cd in the lombard -worked
Conclusion: The cd module is working. there's something with the lombard hardware (not the cd module) that doesn't allow it to recognize data cds? I can't figure this one out - any advice appreciated!
Thanks