Reviving a G4 Cube DVD drive

[feltel]

I got myself a G4 Cube for a reasonable price. It has its problems I have to work on. One is a disc drive it was damaged in a way I never ever saw before. Someone managed to jam a floppy disk into the DVD drive. It was not visible from the outside. The only thing that was more than unusual is the horrible noise the computer made when powering on. Upon taking it apart I found this.



When I saw this I was between laughing and screaming.



I took the drive apart as best I could and managed to repair it to a state that it inserts and ejects discs. But the drive does not spin the discs and Mac OS is not aware of an inserted discs. There must be a sensor of some kind that detects if there is a disc inside. I more of a floppy drive repair guy and not familiar with optical drives.

Upon repair I found one broken plastic part which belongs to an arm on the front end left side (where my tweezers point to). But this arms do not relate to detecting a disc I think.

I'm seeking for help to get this drive working again.

 

[Scorpio_ny]

Hi @feltel.

Maybe it would be more feasible to just replace the drive? I just completed installing a SuperDrive in my G4 cube. It definitely Involves more work, but to me, it was worth it. I was going to do a write up on my experience. It does require getting more parts, but it works perfectly. I am able to burn DVD's with toast and I am currently doing a clean install booting off a burned DVD of Mac OS 10.4 retail.

 

[feltel]

Replacing the drive would be an option for sure. But compatible drives seems rare. As far as I know only the iMac G3 slot loading drives are compatible. And most of the iMacs came with CD drives not DVD. Writing discs on the Cube is not a priority for me.

But if you are documenting fitting a replacement drive maybe I'll follow your way.

 

[Scorpio_ny]

They may not be as rare as you think. I used a slot loading superdrive. The model is UJ-85J-C which are available on EBay. I also completed a replacement SSD and upgraded the CPU to 1.6Ghz. I documented what I did for the SSD on another website. I could repost it here if there is interest.

 

[François]

Smaller slot loading optical drives (from laptops) can be used in the Cube. You’ll have to devise some sort of mounting solution (double sided tape can help!). See This thread.

 

[feltel]

I got myself a replacement drive. Exact same model as mine. Much to my surprise this drive has the exact same problem. It does not recognize a inserted disc. It this a common fault with these drives?

 

[Scorpio_ny]

Hi @feltel ,

I just posted my walkthrough experience in replacing the G4 Cube optical drive.