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iMac G4 won't eject CD/DVD drive!

twillkickers

Well-known member
Picked up the top of the line 1.25 GHz iMac G4 from the junkyard, and everything on it was working except for the CD/DVD drive. When I pressed the eject button on the keyboard, nothing happened. In addition, I went to the command line mode on bootup (CMD+OPTION+O+F) and then typed in "eject cd". The command line responded "CAN'T open the EJECT device." I cracked open the iMac, cleaned out the case and everything, and replaced the CD/DVD drive with a CD/DVD drive from a less powerful iMac G4 (that I knew was working) and turned on the machine. Everything booted up OK, but once again I cannot eject the new CD drive. What the heck!? Does anyone know what might be going on here?

 

twillkickers

Well-known member
So I took it apart again, and swapped the IDE cable with the one from the other iMac, and everything worked. So I'm not sure if the IDE cable is specific to that drive, or if I was just dealing with a bad IDE cable in the first place.

 

jimjimx

Well-known member
You can also try holding the mouse button at time of boot, and that should eject the disk. 

 
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