Dlsd superdrive wont eject

[JohnKCG]

As the title implies, I have a dlsd PB which I recently acquired and revamped (re-apply thermal paste in it's three chips, replaced the HDD for a SSD and soon I'll max it ram-wise), I had a Leopard DVD and tried to boot it via Command+Option and it didn't see it in the multi-boot screen, so I then tried to make it eject the dvd, but to no sucess, then I tried resetting PRAM via the keyboard combination, left mouse click, eject key and then Open Firmware, which I also used to reset pram and the like with OF's commands, then I tried to eject it via OF, it didn't but it gave me this message:

"Eject method failed"

I gave up and opened it again and took the dvd from the Super Drive itself, when I opened it didn't seem cracked or damaged in any way (the PB was in very great condition (the owner even gave me the box with the original wrappings....) save the Thermal paste which was completely dry, also the battery doesn't seem too well, even after a PRAM reset), I took the dvd, clean what I could with a artistic brush (without forcing or damaging anything) and tried to see if the Ejector arm of the SD was rigid, it was but it could move OK, reassembled everything and tried inserting the dvd again, the SD "sucked" the dvd as it did before but I got the same ressult.... The DLSD can boot via USB, but I would like to also have a dvd drive, if anyone could give me some insight I would greatly appreciate it...

Also, the left speaker vibrates (I don't know what could cause it since I tightened the For 8 screws (also without damaging....), don't know why....

Thanks before hand for your answers.

 

[JohnKCG]

Would it be better if I added photos?

 

[Raging Dufus]

John, congratulations on acquiring a very sought-after PowerBook!

Unfortunately, sometimes stuff just wears out. Your DLSD is about 16 years old now, and laptop optical drives are notoriously fragile. You probably just need to replace it, either with another working (though not necessarily newer) unit, or maybe buy one or more busted "for parts" PowerBooks that you can keep around to source spare parts from. The latter is probably a good idea anyway, because more stuff on your DLSD is likely to fail. It just goes with the territory of trying to keep these old machines useful.

As for the speaker, on your DLSD the speakers sit underneath grilles that allow spills to reach them. It could be that that's what happened, and the speaker has begun to deteriorate because of it. It could also be that the speaker has just begun to deteriorate anyway, from being in a humid environment or simply because it had some defect that made it not last as long as the other one. No amount of tightening screws will fix that, and again, these things are bound to happen. The speakers are relatively easy to replace.

You'll find that eBay and shopgoodwill are good sources from which to acquire parts and/or whole machines, working or otherwise. In the meantime, if you have another Mac with an optical drive and a FireWire port, you could use Target Disk Mode to allow your DLSD to access the optical drive on the other Mac, and install Leopard that way. There are other ways too, like removing the SSD from your DLSD, putting it into an enclosure connected to another Mac that will boot Leopard, and install it that way; then put the SSD back in your DLSD. There are lots of ways to do this if you have the right hardware, but given your situation you may find the simplest method is, as you mentioned, USB booting.

Have fun and good luck!

 

[JohnKCG]

John, congratulations on acquiring a very sought-after PowerBook!

Unfortunately, sometimes stuff just wears out. Your DLSD is about 16 years old now, and laptop optical drives are notoriously fragile. You probably just need to replace it, either with another working (though not necessarily newer) unit, or maybe buy one or more busted "for parts" PowerBooks that you can keep around to source spare parts from. The latter is probably a good idea anyway, because more stuff on your DLSD is likely to fail. It just goes with the territory of trying to keep these old machines useful.

As for the speaker, on your DLSD the speakers sit underneath grilles that allow spills to reach them. It could be that that's what happened, and the speaker has begun to deteriorate because of it. It could also be that the speaker has just begun to deteriorate anyway, from being in a humid environment or simply because it had some defect that made it not last as long as the other one. No amount of tightening screws will fix that, and again, these things are bound to happen. The speakers are relatively easy to replace.

You'll find that eBay and shopgoodwill are good sources from which to acquire parts and/or whole machines, working or otherwise. In the meantime, if you have another Mac with an optical drive and a FireWire port, you could use Target Disk Mode to allow your DLSD to access the optical drive on the other Mac, and install Leopard that way. There are other ways too, like removing the SSD from your DLSD, putting it into an enclosure connected to another Mac that will boot Leopard, and install it that way; then put the SSD back in your DLSD. There are lots of ways to do this if you have the right hardware, but given your situation you may find the simplest method is, as you mentioned, USB booting.

Have fun and good luck!

Thanks a lot for your answer @Raging Dufus, yes, I was also surprised to see such a relatively rare PB in a very good state, and you are completely right, Super Drives (according to many people here) are very fragile, but given the state in which the machine arrived I believe the SD could be fixed, even if it's not usually worth the effort, I would like to learn a little about DVD drives along the way, only out of curiosity, could a bad pram battery be causing the SuperDrive to malfunction? I know it sounds like a very unlikely reason for the SD to malfunction, but it's unlikely things that usually make obscure defects happen.

Also, the speaker worked right before the teardown, so I think it could be something I did.

In any case, given the difficulty in procuring an Apple original SD, could I replace it with another DVD (or even blue ray if possible) from another brand? The best thing should be buying a sata drive and plug an adapter to make it work with the PB...

 

[JohnKCG]

I believe I solved it... I'm between those two models:

Panasonic Mercury for Mac mini - 8X DVDRW/6X DL... at MacSales.com

OWCMMINISL8XDL OWC Mercury Mac mini internal Super-Multidrive Upgrade Kit for 2006-2007 G4 & Intel Mac mini models. Burns DVDs at up to 8X, Dual Layer DVD up to 6X, & up to 24X CD Burn. 1 Year OWC Limited Warranty.

eshop.macsales.com

OWC Mercury 12.7mm 8X Super-MultiDrive Internal... at MacSales.com

OWCMPBG4SD8XDLA OWC Mercury 12.7mm 8X Super-MultiDrive Internal ATAPI Optical Drive Upgrade for PowerBook G4. Slot-loading optical drive burns up to 8X DVD, 4X DVD-DL, 24X CD-RW. For select 17-inch & 15-inch PowerBook G4 models.

eshop.macsales.com

The compatibility list says both work with my PB, but I don't know what's the difference between the two...

In any case, unless the quality and durability varies a lot between those two, I'm inclined to go for the 29.99$ one...

 

[Raging Dufus]

Thanks a lot for your answer @Raging Dufus, yes, I was also surprised to see such a relatively rare PB in a very good state, and you are completely right, Super Drives (according to many people here) are very fragile, but given the state in which the machine arrived I believe the SD could be fixed, even if it's not usually worth the effort, I would like to learn a little about DVD drives along the way, only out of curiosity, could a bad pram battery be causing the SuperDrive to malfunction? I know it sounds like a very unlikely reason for the SD to malfunction, but it's unlikely things that usually make obscure defects happen.

Also, the speaker worked right before the teardown, so I think it could be something I did.

In any case, given the difficulty in procuring an Apple original SD, could I replace it with another DVD (or even blue ray if possible) from another brand? The best thing should be buying a sata drive and plug an adapter to make it work with the PB...

Bad PRAM batteries are known to cause problems in some earlier PowerBook models, but not generally in the aluminum PowerBooks, and not the type of problem you're experiencing. So I'd say no, it's not the PRAM battery, although replacing it couldn't hurt.

I've damaged those small speakers before just by handling them, so it's possible you caused it. Could be just a grain of dust in the wrong place, you never know. Then again, it could be that your audio settings have gotten mucked up by messing around in Open Firmware. I really don't know what to tell you about that; to determine the cause and the solution, experimentation would seem to be in order.

I don't think you could go wrong with that $29 optical drive from OWC, with a warranty! Unless I'm missing something, it's brand new, and for OWC that's an uncharacteristically reasonable price.

 

[JohnKCG]

For whoever may be in the same situation I am, this was the response OWC gave me about the difference between the two drives:

" https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MPBG4SD8XDLA/
this one is an older model on sale. I would require you t have 10.3 installed and a separate burning software like Christian Moller's PatchBurn Software.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Panasonic/MMINISL8XDL/
this one has nativ support despite the OS you use

neither of them include that cable(he's speaking about the cable that connects the drive to the motherboard), and I do not sell it separate John"

About the difference between the two, I don't know if Linux (the OS I will use the drive with) have that problem, but speed and quality wise, they seem equal, unless I'm missing something...

Also, I asked if, by some miracle, they still had batteries for our PBs, no luck... I forgot to ask them if they had Sonnet G4 cards, although it would be mostly pointless to ask them that....

Edit: I found this battery:

Used Apple Computer Parts, used Mac computers, Refurbished Apple | DV Warehouse

Welcome to DV Warehouse your one stop shop for used Apple Computers, refurbished Mac Component Parts & Accessories. All items are in good to excellent condition and include our 90-Days Hardware Warranty

www.dvwarehouse.com

I don't know anything about neither the store nor the originality of the battery itself....

Another representative of OWC had this to say:

"Dear John,
There is a physical different between the two models so they are compatible with different machines. On the product pages under compatibility you can see the compatible machines. They are pretty similar for their overall capabilities."

 

[TheShortTimer]

Unfortunately, sometimes stuff just wears out. Your DLSD is about 16 years old now, and laptop optical drives are notoriously fragile.

Especially those SuperDrives that Apple made standard on their laptops. I've had three fail on me - one was actually replacement for a drive that stopped working and it hadn't even been used that much! Likewise with the slot loading drive on my 2012 MBP - which I purchased brand new at the end of 2013 directly from Apple's clearance outlet and barely lasted three years.

In comparison, I have two G3 iBooks with their stock tray-loading optical drives that are now decades old and they continue to work without any issue.

You probably just need to replace it, either with another working (though not necessarily newer) unit, or maybe buy one or more busted "for parts" PowerBooks that you can keep around to source spare parts from. The latter is probably a good idea anyway, because more stuff on your DLSD is likely to fail. It just goes with the territory of trying to keep these old machines useful.

Very good advice: there are items that I've purchased in multiples because I was mindful of a future scenario where they would be scarce and also expensive due to their scarcity and I didn't want to end up scouring the world to find more. My only regret is that I haven't done this more often.

 

[netsrot39]

I can confirm that SuperDrives (ones that have the slot loading mechanism, not the tray loading ones) are prone to failure. The failure mostly happens out of the blue and I've had a bunch of SuperDrives failing on me over the years. I normally replace the failed optical drive with a caddy so I can add additional storage (and ditch the optical drive). Now as @TheShortTimer has already pointed out, SuperDrives tend to fail more often in newer machines (the one in my 2012 MacBook Pro failed shortly after the warranty expired). As far as interchangeability, I think you can swap the drives as you like as long as the interface is the same and it is Apple branded (that was at least my experience when I swapped drives around). I don't believe SuperDrives are necessarily scarce, they can easily be sourced from broken machines (of course there is always a possibility that the SuperDrive has failed in those as well, but your chances are 50/50 I'd say) or bought second hand on various market places.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Now as @TheShortTimer has already pointed out, SuperDrives tend to fail more often in newer machines (the one in my 2012 MacBook Pro failed shortly after the warranty expired).

It died on you just after the warranty expired? That's so annoying.

I don't believe SuperDrives are necessarily scarce, they can easily be sourced from broken machines (of course there is always a possibility that the SuperDrive has failed in those as well, but your chances are 50/50 I'd say) or bought second hand on various market places.

I was referring in broad terms to when I've experienced recriminations for not buying things because I was erroneously under the assumption that they'd always be widely available.

Personally, I've always purchased my slot-loading SuperDrives in new condition because otherwise there's the all too high risk that the unit could be approaching its twilight life expectancy.

 

[JohnKCG]

After reading you, I think I will earn a bit more to buy the best OWC one, at least with that one I have a three month warranty....

 

[B S Magnet]

As far as interchangeability, I think you can swap the drives as you like as long as the interface is the same and it is Apple branded (that was at least my experience when I swapped drives around). I don't believe SuperDrives are necessarily scarce, they can easily be sourced from broken machines (of course there is always a possibility that the SuperDrive has failed in those as well, but your chances are 50/50 I'd say) or bought second hand on various market places.

“SuperDrive” is simply a trademark Apple used to refer to OEM DVD-RW drives. Nearly all of these in Apple portable/Mac mini were manufactured by Panasonic/Matsushita (“Matshita”).

The key consideration when searching for a replacement is whether the replacement DVD-RW drive model is ATAPI/IDE or SATA, followed by whether the drive is slot-load or tray-load. The UJ-800-series models are several and, whilst specifications on specific models are out there, they can be somewhat hard to find.

The DVD-RW model in A1138/A1139 PowerBooks was the UJ-846. Several models in 2006–2008 MacBook/Pros use the UJ-875 which, like the UJ-846-equipped PowerBooks, use ATAPI/IDE, not SATA. The height of the UJ-875s is slightly thinner and their write specs are a bit faster than the UJ-846, but they tend to be fairly common on the secondhand market.

 

[TheShortTimer]

“SuperDrive” is simply a trademark Apple used to refer to OEM DVD-RW drives. Nearly all of these in Apple portable/Mac mini were manufactured by Panasonic/Matsushita (“Matshita”).

I have a few Apple portables that use LG drives - and I much prefer the Panasonic units because they can be flashed to region-free status within macOS whereas carrying this out with the LG ones requires that you use Windows within a VM or via BootCamp or my favourite - and easiest method: the Live XP session offered by Hiren's BootCD.

 

[B S Magnet]

I have a few Apple portables that use LG drives - and I much prefer the Panasonic units because they can be flashed to region-free status within macOS whereas carrying this out with the LG ones requires that you use Windows within a VM or via BootCamp or my favourite - and easiest method: the Live XP session offered by Hiren's BootCD.

Yeah, there are a few LGs out there, and I’ve even seen a couple of SuperDrives from Benq.