[PhoenixG27]

Hey y'all. I've got a RevA iMac 233 with the tray loading CD. My CD drive has always been sorta annoying, but a few weeks ago it stopped working all together. I put in a disc, it starts it off spinning and loading it and what it normally does, but it doesn't stop. It keeps loading and then almost mounting and then loading and stopping and trying to load and etc. I've been using my burner to mount CDs for now - which is just fine, but I want to boot off of OS X and I can't! When I put OS X in and restart holding C, the computer begins starting up and tries to access the CD drive for a minute or so, and then gives up and goes along with my normal OS 9.1 startup.

Can anyone help me!? Is there any way I can boot off a CD that's in my external burner? I tried selecting OS X as my startup disk while in my burner but when I restarted it ejected it.

Any suggestions? Thanx a lot. =D

[xyber233]

Maybe you should try cleaning the lens. Also, does it do this to just one cd? If its just the cd, try cleaning the cd.

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iMac1337

[Jag in orlando]

I believe your Cd-rom went out. I have a rev-d imac 333 that also has a tray loading CD-rom and it stop working about a year after I bought the computer, but it didn't effect me to much because like you I have an external CD burnner that I used in its place.

Now last week when I bought OSX I tried to install it though the external CD-rom but it wouldn't really do anyting, it would try the internal CD-rom and then go into loading 9.1. I called apple support and they told me OSX must be installed by the internal CD-rom, that external CD-roms will not work. That left me kind of helpless because my internal CD-rom has been shot for some time now, so what I did next (and please don't do this ever) was to copy the OSX system folder to the imac hard drive, select it as the start up disk, and then restarted the computer. After that the computer wouldn't even start up, insteed of a little happy mac icon it would just show a broken system folder and do nothing else. Once again please don't do that.

Now the only way my imac would work is if I installed a new internal CD-rom drive and rebooted the computer with the system disk in there. I found a new CD-rom at <http://www.allapplemac.com/ > for about 80 dollars and installed that, rebooted with OSX and everytings fine now. I would recommend getting a new internal CD-rom and only use it for things that won't work with externals and use the external for everything else.

It sounds like my old CD-rom and yours have the same problem, it would play some CD's, but couldn't get up to speed to load the mac system disks. The tray loading cd-roms don't seem to last very long, and I believe that's why apple went to slot loading versions.

good luck

[PhoenixG27]

Ok... I checked out there website... but my result are inconclusive. Here's what I was looking at.

661-2076a CD-ROM Drive, 24X, Ver.1 iMac $129.00
661-2224 CD-ROM Drive, Slot-Loading, 24X iMac (with Slot Load CD/DVD) $129.00
661-2225a Drive, DVD-ROM, Slot-Loading, 4 / 24X iMac (with Slot Load CD/DVD) $109.00
661-2207a CD-ROM Drive, 24x, Ver.2 iMac $59.00


Which one of those can I use? I assume it's the Ver.1 iMac CD ROM drive since I have a RevA, but what about Ver.2? It's a lot cheaper and you said you got your new CD drive for about $80... i don't see anything at that price here. Also, is there any way I can put a slot loading CD drive in place of a tray?

Thanx.

[Jag in orlando]

The 661-2207a CD-ROM Drive, 24x, Ver.2 iMac $59.00 CD-rom was the one I bought, but a week ago they made me pay 79 for it, which doesn't exactly make me happy but I had to have it. Since my computer was nonfunctioning when I was searching for parts I had to use the local library computer to find sites, which means I had to call them, and when I called them they ask what computer I had and told which one would work.

Now I must warn you the prices on their web site reflect a 10% cash discount, meaning if you pay in any other way other than cash the price is 10% higher. I didn�t know that until the lady I talked to on the phone was ready to take my credit card. So my then 79.00 CD-rom went to 81.37 and you have to pay for shipping.

The real kicker here was that I ask for over night shipping (15.00) on wednesday (because I was in the middle of a important project when the computer went) and it arrived on thursday at 3pm, by 4pm I realized they sent me a CD-rom that doesn�t work. So there I sat with my Imac in pieces and two CD-roms that didn�t work, I was really mad. I called back and had them overnight me another one (15.00 again), and I had to pay to send the first one back (3.50). Monday I finally had a CD-rom that worked, but compared to all the other apple parts dealers I found on the web I still saved money, because everyone else wanted 149.00 for the same thing. Not to mention CompUSA wanted 100 just to look at it, 149 for the CD-rom, and an extra 39 if you wanted your computer back in under 2 weeks.

After my little war story if you still want to do business with them I would give them a call, thats seems to be how their business is set up, the web site is just to drive traffic to their phones. There are other apple parts dealers, just choose a search engine and put in �apple parts�, thats how I found the allapplemac people.

I�m pretty sure you use the Version 1 CD-rom, and I haven�t heard of anyone able to put in a slot loading one in place of a tray, but I wish you could I would have much rather had that then another tray.

best of luck
jag