[GlobalNomad]

Hi,

I haven't used my disk drive in a really long time. And then when I went to use a CD this morning it didn't work... One was already in there...

What I have done
- doesn't eject when I hold down the mouse button on start up
- go into open firmware and type eject cd (it said OK but nothing came out)
- It doesn't show up in Disk Utilities

Is there a manual eject for CDs on the 12" Powerbook (Rev A) with superdrive.
Like with a paper clip?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[LfGrdMike]

Apple - Support - Mac 101 - Troubleshooting 101 - Computer Crises

Has your drive been acting odd or did this come as a surprise?

[GlobalNomad]

Sadly none of that worked.
Is there a manual eject on these powerbooks?

My drive hasn't been acting odd.

[LfGrdMike]

Sadly none that I know of. Someone may prove me wrong and I hope for your sake they do. What I can tell you is there might be one on the drive but its not accessible. That would mean you would have to take it apart though. Hopefully someone will be able to help you out better than I could. This might be a stupid question but did you try holding the track pad button down when you restarted. I don’t even know if that would work but hey its worth a shot. Can you hear the disc spinning up?

[LfGrdMike]

Sometimes if you hold the eject key right away when you restart it will pop out. I have done that on some macs before not PowerBooks.

There is also the diskutil command in terminal that can eject I believe. Unfortunately my mac is at school at the moment and I can't test this for you and my father is on his iMac right now... You may also try deleting the cd volume under the /Vols or /Volumes directory i think it is. It is hidden let me know if you need any help in terminal to do this.

It also might be trying to eject but the disc is to thick and can't get out. Do you hear any feedback? I have heard and seen this before on iMac G3s I noticed it a lot.

[GlobalNomad]

I can't hear the disk spinning up.

Hmm I might try deleting the cd volume, what are the commands to do so?

[amazing]

Only one suggestion, which has worked for me, sometimes. It's part of the system software: you can install an eject top-menu button. When the system somehow doesn't know there's a disk in the drive, the command reads: Open Combo Drive.

Anyway, go to /System/Library/Core Services/Menu Extras/ and then double-click "eject.menu". You can remove it later by option-dragging it off the top menu bar.

Might, or might not work.

[LfGrdMike]

First run this command in Terminal and post the output here.

ls /Volumes

Just running a rm command which we will be doing is not safe unless I know what is mounted right now. If you get an error its because I don't have the correct path. I know on linux its /mounts or /dev/mounts or something like that. I am pretty sure its Volumes so run that command and let me know what you get.

If your handy with a screw driver I would be willing to bet you can find the eject button on that cd drive but its probably just inaccessible I might do some googling around about that later.

My 12" PowerBook is back at school so I can check it out then.

btw amazing had a good idea go ahead and try that. I also think if you hold the option key down on startup you get an eject option for volumes but the volume would have to show up so I doubt it will work.

Just for kicks and giggles I want you to try to clear your system caches with Onyx. Its a great utility you can acquire off of versiontracker. I can provide more information perhaps screenshots once I am back with my Mac.

[amazing]

Last suggestion, which is also a general troubleshooting suggestion: Establish a second admin user account, then login as that 2nd user. See if the problem still persists. There have been some odd problems that have been diagnosed this way, stuff that's really bizarre.